Gardens have a particular significance for white Australia: they have helped make meaning and 'home' in a new place; enabled connections with the Australian environment or rejection of it and facilitated the development of friendships and social connections. Using individual gardens, both public and private, Reading the Garden illuminates the meaning and uses of gardens and gardening in Australia from white settlement to the late twentieth century. Memory and belonging, domestication and civilisation, nationalism and identity are woven into a compelling narrative around gardens and landscape.
