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ART IN THE GARDEN

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Mary O'Connell started the Art in the Garden team at the UNSW Community Permaculture Garden.

Story... Mary O'Connell; Photos... Russ Grayson

The Collins Concise English Dictionary defines:

art: the creation of works of beauty or other special significance

garden: an area of land used for the cultivation of ornamental plants, herbs, fruit, vegetables, trees etc; a fertile and beautiful region

beauty: the combination of all the qualities of a person or thing that delight the senses and mind.

Given that the Garden; this one, your one and my one, is a region of beauty, delighting the senses and mind, then the Garden is already Art and gardeners, already artists.

Gardeners are designers, planners, structurers, planters, protectors and carers of these beauties, these art works known as gardens.

As an artist works with the material, bringing their vision, imagination, training, knowledge and love of the work to the work, and keeping in mind those others who will appreciate their creation, so too does the gardener.

But as is clear to most artists working in other mediums, we are not alone in our creative work. We are not the Great Creatrix of course; as the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke says:

In spite of all the farmer's work and worry,

he can't reach down to where the seed is slowly

transmuted into summer.

The earth bestows.

(Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) , translation: Mitchell)

Gardeners as co-creators

But we are at least co-creators of such works of beauty - this is the essence of artistry.

So much of the visual arts - paintings, statues, mosaics, drawings - represent the beauty of the natural world, and add to it. An interesting exercise might be to go around your home, or one room in it, and see how many flowers you actually have blooming in your home. And not just in framed pictures, but on dinner plates, cups, on curtains, couches, cushions, carpets, bedding perhaps, and the cards you delight in sending and receiving from your friends.

Purists might say our culture has overvalued the flower, usually inedible, and has neglected the more useful vegetables, fruits and crops of the planet. I say, however, to the Kings of Permaculture Practicality in our community garden that beauty is also a function; a function of the soul!

As the prophet Mohammed said:

If you have two loaves of bread,

give one away in exchange for a flower

because the bread will feed your body,

but the flower feeds the soul.

Other forms of beauty

Anyway, going on to the main part of my story is that we can create and grow many more beautiful forms in our gardens other than plants.

All cultures, as far as I can see, have brought other forms of beauty into their gardens; bringing in artefacts to relate to the living forms there.

Statues, ranging from the graceful to the grotesque, and all meaningful. Fountains, sundials, symbols formed by metals or arrangement of stones, or entire gardens fitted into a the shape of a symbol, coloured tiles, mosaics, pots, pools... they've all been part of the Garden since we have kept records.

It’s the interplay between forms, worlds, material and spiritual that makes this a relational Universe. You can make these things for your own garden; or find them or buy them; art lies also in the choice and the placing of beautiful things.

A lot of people say, ‘oh, I can't create’, ‘I can't make’, ‘I'm not creative’ etc.. Well it’s not true, but even for those of us who have been suppressed in this area, many of us can and do decorate. And all decoration is art. To adorn, to ornament is to celebrate the universe and your life in it.

Set them aflutter

It doesn't have to be just visual 'concrete' art forms. I take words into our garden; laminate them, twirl bright gold ribbons through them and set them aflutter on poles and wires and branches and around tree trunks. Visitors love the poetry; it adds a new dimension to the garden, and expresses in another language the love of beauty and one another that the Garden also speaks.

Your words don't have to be poetry, it can be sayings you like, insights you have had while working in the garden, prayers, song lyrics. Anything that gladdens your heart. You can handwrite and laminate or use a fancy font on the computer.

So, get out there

So get out there and decorate your garden. As well as words, you can laminate favourite pictures, be they of gardens or not, for meditation, or more colour or just more and more pleasure. You know all those beautiful calendars we get and hate to throw away; laminate some of the images and hang them in your garden. They'll last about six months even in an exposed position, longer if more sheltered.

Things and ideas and inspirations will come to you. For me, I always loved the art of the mosaic, and I always assumed I was:

1. several centuries too late and
2. no time, money, talent to find out how.

But this country is blessed with craft books, guides, journals, classes. For $3.95 I picked up a little book published by Murdoch Books at the supermarket on mosaic making. It lead me through a wonderful learning process involving weeks and many people, till the Garden had its first plate mosaic of a tulip, followed by an iris.

Now we hope to start a shared mosaic of the Garden’s logo.

Happy creating/crafting

Mary O'Connell organises artistic and poetry events in the UNSW Community Permaculture Garden.

This is a transcript of a talk by Mary at the annual community gardens get-together in the Waverly Community Garden, Bondi Junction, May 2000.

PAGE UPDATED... Friday, 1 March 2002