Plant Talk

Gardens Into Art - a Fiber Artist's Take on My Garden

It's pretty amazing to see your garden transformed into a landscape quilt. A couple of weeks ago a fiber artist from Georgia emailed me and asked if she could use a photo I'd posted here on Plant Talk for a piece she was making for a class. The photo is of Japanese forest grass flowing around an old wooden Buddha, set off by a white peony blooming amid the blades of grass - an ephemeral scene in one corner of the garden.

The artist is Jane Broaddus, who started out as a traditional quilter and has gone on to creating items both useful and beautiful out of various fabrics. She has her own Etsy shop with weird, felted creatures and unique purses.

Here's how Jane describes the progression of the piece:

"Last summer I took a class on landscape quilts, and the teacher requested that we bring a photograph to class. Normally I work from my own photos, but being pressed for time, I snagged a picture off a blog posting about peonies (June 15, 2009) written by Valerie Easton (www.valeaston.com). I initially took that picture to class figuring I would just use it to learn new techniques. But then I fell in love both with the photograph and the project. So next I thought it prudent to ask Ms. Easton’s permission to use her photograph before I proceeded to completion. I offered to give her full credit for the photograph that was the inspiration for my work if I displayed the piece anywhere. She graciously gave me permission for its use."

I had no idea Jane's work, in cotton, silk, paper and paint, would be so evocative of living plants and a scene so dear to my heart. She's captured the serenity of the Buddha, the liquid, flowing nature of the grasses and the overblown explosion of peony with fabric and thread. The piece is 18.5 x 25 inches....Here's the original photo and Jane's interpretation:

 

Mid-Summer Garden Party

Friday night I was lucky enough to be a guest of honor at the Vashon Allied Art's Gala the night before the annual Vashon Island garden tour.  VAA threw a lovely party for 150 islanders and off-islanders, who gathered to contribute to the arts and celebrate the fabulous gardens of Vashon. So it was only appropriate that the party was held in the glorious garden of landscape architect David Pfeiffer. The garden faces west, so the evening was warm and long. It's rich in places to gather and relax, as well as in a riot of perennials, fruits and vegetables. David's kitchen garden is featured in my new book, due out this fall....in the meantime here are a couple of scenes from the evening:

A life-sized buddha surrounded by Euphorbia griffithii 'Fireglow' presides serenly over the festivities

The table settings reflected the sunset colors of the garden; in the center is one of the mailboxes by Vashon artists auctioned off to raise money for Vashon Allied Arts

Impossible to resist the beckoning mown grass labyrinth

The labyrinth is a tranquil transition between the highly cultivated and wilder parts of the garden

Why We Garden

Sure, we garden to cover the ground, to grow food and flowers, to enhance the value of our homes....but none of that explains why so many of us garden exhaustively, spend way more money and time than makes any sense, and most of all, why we love it so. It's not that the beauty, the fragrance, and the joy of nurturing living things aren't reason enough, but doesn't it feel like the obsession runs deeper than anything we can rationally explain?

 I asked my sister, farmer and impassioned flower-grower (you've never seen sweet peas as glorious as the ones she used to grow on her Clatskanie farm) what kept her gardening all these years... for her the draw is  simply being outdoors, hearing the birds, digging in the dirt, messing about with plants. All lovely, elemental reasons, which led me to this quote from D.H. Lawrence that perhaps explains the compulsion to garden, and its greatest satisfactions, at the deepest level.....

"A vast old religion, which once swayed the earth, lingers in our senses: a religion in which the whole life-effort was to get our lives into direct contact with the elemental life of the cosmos - mountain-life, cloud-life, thunder-life, air-life, earth-life, sun-life - to come into the immediate felt contact, and so derive energy, power, and joy."  D.H. Lawrence

Perhaps this ancient religion lingers in the senses of gardeners a little more strongly that that of other folk....I love his phrase "immediate felt contact" which is how I felt when the surprise of a peony I'd never planted peeked out through the Japanese forest grass in my little Buddha garden this weekend....