garden

It's lovely how 'garden' is a noun and a verb. I've been watching Monty Don's series 'Around the world in 80 Garden's' and thoroughly enjoying it. He goes from country to country looking at lovely gardens and talking to gardeners, garden historians, garden-lovers and so on. All the gardeners look amazingly healthy and happy - it seems linked to the longevity of their gardening careers. Anyway I think I love it because I realise that I love gardens, love being in them and looking at them and smelling them and taking pictures - really love all that - but I'm not a very keen gardener. I get dejected by forever repotting and throwing away dead plants and stopping small people from ingesting potting mix. For this reason conventional gardening programs leave me cold - because I don't want to 'recreate the look' or find the exact plant for this or that soil. I don't want to hear about root-rot or pruning. I like the colour and feel of gardens, the patterns and textures. I love leaves and flowers. And I like to think about the links between the gardens people have and who they are.

leaf

I've been reading Keri Smith's two beautiful books (The Guerilla Art Kit and How to be an Explorer of the World). We were inspired to make some leaf sculptures at the Botanic Gardens. Ella also did some 'sap-exploration'- she's deeply interested in tree-sap at the moment - collecting bits of it in pockets and bags. Last time we were at the Botanic gardens we made flower sticks - threading flowers and leaves onto sticks. I'd seen Bhutanese girls from the village of Laya making these in a break from collecting firewood on Tribe.

Cranbourne Botanic Gardens

hands

Two hands with treasures at the Botanic Gardens.