Later-life gardening in a retirement community: sites of identity, resilience and creativity

This chapter explores the experience of gardening in later life, focusing on how older people who move to a retirement community maintain or reinterpret their gardening identity. Qualitative data was collected through repeated in-person interviews, diaries, a photo elicitation task and group workshop with fifteen retirement village residents (average age 77.5) in Brisbane, Australia. We discuss how gardening is a site of identity, creativity and resilience in ageing: a strategy for defining and maintaining ‘body, mind and spirit’ in their new home. Phenomenographic analysis revealed residents experienced late life gardening in five qualitatively different, but individually meaningful ways: the productive gardener (growing food); the creative gardener (creative self-expression); the restricted gardener (gardening within confines of health and ability); the contemplative gardener (gardening for soul); and the social gardener (connections and conversations). As the population ages, understanding how older people maintain, adapt and reinterpret participation in creative leisure activities - despite declining health and mobility - is an essential part of supporting continued flourishing in later life. This research, through identifying the importance, similarities and variation in how these older residents experienced gardening in later life, highlights the significance of designing retirement communities that encourage engagement between residents and the creative leisure pursuit of gardening, as a means of supporting individual happiness, pleasure and resilienc