Queerness was and sometimes still is considered “un-natural.” Queer gardening challenges this “un-naturalness” by creating queer-feminist ecologies.

Our documentary examines what horticultures look like when binaries such as nature/culture, human/more-than-human and body/environment are deconstructed in creative ways.

Ella von der Haide collected 18 interviews with LGBTQIA*-gardeners about their relationships with plants and the land. These conversations take place in a variety of gardens, from urban vegetable production in Oakland to a community space garden in NYC, from a project to care for indigenous native apple trees in British Columbia to a reforestation project in Tennessee.

Queer gardening experiences are “composted” into songs, dance, literature and plant-tattoos. The intimate atmosphere of the interviews allows glimpses of the role gardening plays for queer gardeners as a resource, a form of resistance and as places of world-making through alternative queer narratives, spiritualities and grieving rituals.

The film also reflects the ambiguity of gardens. While they can be places of healing, land use is never innocent, but rather is embedded in the violent colonial history of agriculture and the extinction of plants, insects and animals. Questions of how to decolonize horticulture, how to eradicate racism in the environmental movements and the re-appropriation of spiritualties are discussed.

With her documentary, Ella von der Haide contributes to the emerging discourse about queer ecologies. The film is an unfinished puzzle that prompts you to continue playing with it.