Beth Dow

These pictures were inspired by my English mother-in-law, Pat, who was an accomplished gardener. After years of visiting famous historic properties, I wanted to examine how people shape their own private spaces. I went to Chatsworth Avenue, a tidy little cul-de-sac in South London, where my husband grew up. When his mother died, her neighbors shared stories of how she had helped them with their own gardens, swapping cuttings, labor and encouragement and building friendships over the garden walls.

Her house has now been sold, and the garden that was so much part of her has new owners. Like most terraced English houses, the garden is hidden from public view by walls and fences. I knew we would never walk through it again, so I started looking for bits of it in her neighbors' gardens. My photographs are little glimpses into these intimate spaces, personal ideas of paradise, evidence of one person's legacy living on in the gardens of her friends. Gardening is, after all, the grandest experiment in immortality.

This project has been funded in part by a generous grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.