Three gardens as places of performative resistance and resilience

This research paper focuses on three different gardens located far away from one another. The common nominator of these gardens is to bring the community together for sharing vegetables, herbs, and discussions. Two of them are united by a new innovation, combination of sand and water in lieu of traditional soil. These are the Sahrawi sandoponic garden in the refugee camps in southwestern Algeria and a Helsinki Sandoponic Garden in Helsinki Biennial 2023. The Helsinki Sandoponic Garden is a project by an artistic research group called PHOSfate formed by Pekka Niskanen and Mohamed Sleiman Labat in 2018. Our PHOSfate garden emphasizes the injustices the Sahrawi population and the Baltic Sea have faced. Becoming a refugee is the utmost injustice that can happen to an individual. Eutrophication is causing a trauma for the Baltic Sea and for the inhabitants living on its shores. Sahrawis are refugees because of phosphate mining, and phosphate fertilizers are the reason for the eutrophication in the Baltic Sea. Coping with the trauma and healing from it is an aspect shared by the community garden in Paris and the Helsinki PHOSfate Garden. The community garden of Jardin Truillot in Paris was created after the Bataclan terrorist attack 2015 to help those living near the theater to heal from trauma. When focusing on the importance of gardens, I will engage with some of the discourses around environmental justice and ecological justice. In my text, I will show that the recognition of injustice is the central activism in these three gardens and in my garden practices.