Spring is here. Many French people will spend the weekend pruning, sowing or even planting. Gardens are places of sharing, of family life, places where we regenerate. 15 million French people have a vegetable garden, and 70% have a garden, explains sociologist Jean Viard.
franceinfo: Is having a garden that common?
Jean Viard: It’s very widespread. That’s why we need to talk about it, because we only talk about inflation, youth, violence and immigration. The big question for the French at the moment is the garden. First of all, almost 70% of us have a garden. In addition, there are still 4 million families who have two houses, a secondary residence, a main house. And then there are probably perhaps 1 million people in our urban peripheries, who have a house in Algeria, Morocco, Portugal, etc.
So in fact, gardening is the primary activity of the French. The real France is there. It’s important to say that because we speak as if it were peripheral. It’s completely central. So after this garden, it became a room in the house. That is to say that there is indeed a vegetable garden, of course, but it is also a barbecue, it is a water point.
So, the water point, there are 3 million French people who have swimming pools but there are obviously many who do not have one, but they can have an inflatable pool. It’s a table outside, a social life outside where I’ll be able to entertain friends, drink rosé, grill sausages, and then the kids will jump in the water.
Is that what it represents in the collective imagination, is the garden a place of sharing?
But yes, it must be said that our society is obviously fighting for the climate issue, but this has also led to an increasingly positive valuation of having a physical relationship with nature. Because the climatic battle is also carnal. There is a pleasure in sitting under a tree that you planted yourself, and saying to yourself: I planted it 40 years ago, I am 40 years older. That’s not great news, but the tree is magnificent. I experience this, because I planted a lot of trees, as if my time had actually been transferred to the tree, and the tree, it is magnificent, I sit under it and I say to myself: I I spent my time at the tree, and he is in full childhood.
And then there is a second thing that comes into play, which is that the garden must be done with care. It’s complicated, we have failures. Look at the vegetable gardens, there are 15 million French people who have a food garden. Historically, it was especially in the East and the North where it was an old working-class tradition. Moreover, in the settlements, there is always a vegetable garden behind the house where there are two small gardens, a garden on the street side, there, we show that we are well organized, that we have four rose bushes, that ‘we cut the grass, it’s the staging.
And then behind the house, there is either a courtyard or a small vegetable garden. A small vegetable garden can bring in between 100 and 150 euros per month, during the production period, with a few products, tomatoes, strawberries, etc., which may be things that we are not going to buy, because they are is too expensive.
And this is not negligible in a context where we have experienced long months with a lot of inflation, except last month when it slowed down?
I tell people: Garden! Make these products in particular. It’s like chickens: two chickens eat all the waste from a family of four, it’s enough to feed them. You have two eggs a day. We don’t know this whole popular economy, we tend to despise it a little. However, this is very important because these are quality products.
There is a joy in giving your children a tomato that you grew in your garden, which is enormous, and we must emphasize that. Yes, people talk to me too much about urban society, they talk to me too much about these crises that we exacerbate all day long. I say: think of your gardens, think of our gardeners.