Gardens are highly ambivalent spaces located on the border between wilderness and domestication, Englishness and otherness, nature and culture, private and public, science and romance, to list but some of many binary oppositions significant in the context of (post)colonial translocation. Gardens are also the products of numerous processes of dislocation and transplantation, and as such, feature in writings ranging from the poetic to the scientific.

While associated with leisure activities, peace, pastoral idylls and idealising creativity, gardens in colonial and postcolonial writing have both ideological and political dimensions which are reflected on diverse levels. As a result, gardens do not merely function as setting but constitute spaces with a character and a history of their own which engage with the imposition of language and foreign control.

Focussing on Caribbean poets and writers Olive Senior, Jamaica Kincaid and Shani Mootoo, this paper will examine different representations of gardens as liminal spaces, where (de)colonising influences are negotiated.