Creativity and gardening

Gardening is a creative activity, in my experience.

I've loved putting plants together in containers in agreeable ways, mixing up vegetables and herbs in attractive combinations, and helping my gardening companion recreate natural plant combinations while restoring landscapes, etc.

Finalizing a weekend program (on Gardening and Creativity) for the John C. Campbell Folk School (for next April, 2014) had me thinking again about the gifts of gardening.

I'd mused on this subject last December as I was thinking about doing programs (and re-reading Fran Sorin's lovely book, Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening.)

And my thinking about this was reinforced earlier this week at the Davidson Horticultural Symposium, where Noel Kingsbury talked about a German garden designer whose muse was music and gardens, and Julie Moir Messervy recounted (at the end of a presentation about contemplative gardening) the experience of designing the Toronto Music Garden. 

I found a visit to the Toronto Music Garden amazing -- it was totally inspirational for me (in the context of visiting a garden with a meaningful experience) to listen to the audio tour through the garden in mid-summer some years ago).

Do you hear music in gardens? 

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Gardening and creativity

I've been re-reading a lovely book that I've had for awhile -- Fran Sorin's Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening.  She's a tremendously wise gardener, and her book, published in 2004, has obvious 'legs' as it's still in print.

I'm planning on leading a workshop this spring where we'll explore some of the  exercises she describes in her book. And, I'm proposing another workshop and a talk based on this approach in the future, as well.

I think we're missing the creativity in gardening in our popular horticultural press in this country (probably in NA as a whole).  We're all about landscaping language (and tasks), even in fairly sophisticated pieces about gardening in our various magazines, websites, etc.

I've greatly enjoyed Gardens Illustrated (published through the BBC in the UK) for its plant and design-based approach -- they seem to be more about celebrating the creativity of the garden designer and the gardener, instead of thinking about gardens as the equivalent of a room that gets "decorated" every so often, so the articles seem like they have a fresh approach.

Plants grow and change, so are a challenging artistic medium, but they provide an exceptional creative palette, too, for expressing and creating a surrounding space (a garden, if you will) that suits YOU, not anyone else.

Piet and Anja Oudolf's garden, late September 2012

That's what I'm thinking about when I'm considering why I garden and for what purpose, and how I encourage folks in my classes, too, for that matter.

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