Gardening as a Cultural Practice

Second home living and gardening are an integral part of the life of many Russians. This phenomenon has a significant scale in our country. At the same time, practices which are implemented with this “two-house” lifestyle are even less studied. One such practice is gardening. This is the usual state of things for the bearers of this culture, but if you think about it, you can see how much this case is not subject to the rationalistic worldview of modern society. A person in his spare time is engaged in unpaid voluntary, non-specialized labor: he grows food, and sometimes just flowers, despite the fact that it’s possible to buy the same products without engaging in physical labor, exchanging products for the money. This is a rough description of how outside gardening might look like, however, to understand and explain this phenomenon, it is necessary to look at it from the inside, from the point of view of the carriers of this culture. Do they consider this practice work, labor, or rest? What exactly makes one year to make the same cycle of operations? Why is there a place in the modern rationalist world for similar practices?