Relationship anarchy with gardens

by Emily Simek


A friend told me that they are a relationship anarchist. “All relationships are valuable” they said. 

Me reading later that night, 
    The Relationship Anarchy Smorgasbord is a worksheet and tool for discussion with options to implement within your relationship, “to form your relationships: you and another can pick any number of ‘items’ from any number of ‘platters’”, I like imagining the plate that the two of us are filling up, “take a huge helping, or just a scoop”, yummm buffet… “the dish the two of you hold is your relationship”, I wanna try this with someone close to me, “remember you must agree on what is in it!”, I think I’m gonna try this with a garden, “no sneaking in items without the other one knowing, or there will likely be conflict”, definitely, a garden.

Categories to tuck into include Exclusivity, Power / Hierarchy; Labels / Terms; Legal; Kink; Companionship / Playfulness; Romantic; Communication Frequency and Method; Domestic; Financial; Public Displays of Affection; and more. 


Me: “what makes me most uncomfortable are the following phrases: my garden, your garden”

You: …

Me: “things that really annoy me are…”

• Gardening as lifestyle flex
• Private property
• The het-normative primacy of the home garden relationship, aka. home garden as holding space for the nuclear family, aka. hedged in Garden of Eden
• Preppers!

You: …

Me: “I think this is why I don’t tell art people that I have a mortgage”


Key findings from this activity:

• Generally against relationship primacy in home gardening
• This is stolen land, always was always will be Aboriginal land
• Wary of sharing updates on awesome backyard plantings coz access to land is so unfair
• Relationship anarchy as a way to think about my relationships with gardens
• Buffet mmmmmmm

Conclusions:
- Be unfaithful to the home garden
- Smorgasbord more with guerrilla gardens, curb-side and creek-side and ‘friends of’ gardens :-)



Draft, last edited 24.6.26