Art and Gardens

Art and Gardens and Us

What do Art and Gardens Have in Common?

Both are wonderful to look at and spend time with. Both take work and a dedicated process. Both produce individual results depending on the artist or gardener. Both burst full with new creations and also have fallow times, times for replenishing their sources and seeds.

Summer Flowers, painting by Janet Strayer

What Is Our Role?

Most of all, both art and gardens have a lot to do with us, that is, human beings. Neither art nor gardens are natural in the sense of springing directly from nature. Wildflowers and plants are nature's domain, and human intervention can hardly compete with nature's forms of wildness and beauty. Yet we seem forever to have needed to insert our visions and intentions into creating bothart and gardens.

Why? In order to sustain and connect our personal vision, I think, amidst of the vast chaotic forces around us. To affirm our willingness to tame, be part of, and care for our bit of nature. To participate in nurturance and growth. To enjoy in solitude the visual and sensory pleasures of and enclosed, safe, and beautiful outdoor haven.

We have little or no control over natural circumstances and little personal impact on world disasters caused by our species. But in art, as in gardening, we take some control in the form of intention to make something out of the ground and whatever materials we've got, to create something for its own sake. Both art and gardens are also an attempt at something more, something that sharpens our vision and interest in the world we have or want to have. Maybe it's something transcendent or just a reminder to look out there and into ourselves as people on the earth.

Garden as Symbol, Story, and Gift

I've come to value my garden over the years. Growing up in apartments and never owning land, gardening was something others did. I lived vertically in towers, even working in the ivory tower of my choice. Settling into a rural community as adult was a revelation to me in many ways. I started my very first garden right in the plowed earth. It was hard work. Not a pot-garden or a terraced one, but a real come-as-you-can from theground one! This garden became my symbol of how things change and grow, not always for the better, but making the best of it anyway.

My garden started as a fantasy. I was a mature woman who'd had absolutely no experience in gardening. Even my apartment potted jade plant was the hardiest and least demanding, Yet once we came to live in a house on Saturna Island, I knew I had to plant a garden.

.A fence had to be built because the plentiful deer eat almost everything in this rural land, except the daffodils you see planted in the garden path leading from house to lower garden. I painted the garden shed in a fantasy theme befitting my garden-to-be. My vision was to insert narrow brick paths into the ground (Oz's yellow brick road was my inspiration, but I left them as is). Around these paths, I would start planting a riot of many assorted flowers. I knew nothing about what grows well together and thought only of colours I wanted Rosebushes to to be the queens of my enchanted garden domain, so planted these first at corners of my intersecting little red brick road. I favoured perennials, knowing so little about maintaining plants and not wanting to fuss too much. I truly could not tell which were some weeds, so just let them be. A mix of of the wild and the cultured, I did not aim to be a fastidious warden of my garden In fact, I continue to be a casual, sometimes wayward gardener. My philosophy is: I plant,, you grow or don't, but I'll do what I can.

The results were incredible! Look at the video! I was amazed every time the seeds I'd planted became flowers! A new experience for me, and one that still surprises me. Sometimes I planted so many different seeds, I didn't know that kinds of flowers would show themselves. . I'm sure many seeds didn't make it. The process was magic. Things actually grew and flowered and offered amazingly colourful, aromatic delights. Yes, a little bit of paradise. Perhaps you can imagine how proud and grateful this made me, to know that these city-raised hands could have had a part in creating this.

Over the years, my garden has continued to surprise me. It's a joy to walk by this time of year, seeing new growth daily, to sit in it for a bit, watching the bees (too few) and amazing hummingbirds. If your standing quietly with the watering hose, they'll come by and hover beside the spray. I feel lucky.

Creative Link between Art and Gardening

My rural garden in my magical spot on Saturna Island is one the most enjoyable things I've helped to create. Nature plays a large role in this creation. Wildflowers enter where I haven't planted them and things bloom that I may or may not have intentionally planted. My garden may not fit into the "house-and-garden" perfection category. Why should it? I planted it with regard to my own vision and wishes. Still, it's a treat for many people who see it. I remain a steadfast "amateur " gardener, and my garden remains a wonder to me!.

About the same time the garden was planted, we built a little art studio up from the house.I have more experience with painting than I do with gardening. But as  I look back , I now see that coincidence in timing as synchronicity at work. My painting took off. I believe there are links beween the two experiences of creating art and gardening, Though familiar with painting and unfamiliar with gardening, I had a vague, overall plan for my fantasy garden. I laid out: quadrants with rose bushes in each, put in an off-center focal area, contrasts of color and texture filled the rest, with accents in some of the border areas That's like thinking about a possible painting.

After this initial structure was planned,, the garden that now grows is more than I could have imagined. It changes. And It invites me to be part of it all. It's been a delight, and one that I think carries over into my art, though I seldom paint flowers. It's just amazing to watch things grow as they do. I sometimes approach my visual art process the same way: plant the seeds, see what comes. And, just as with my garden, I am a prolifically eclectic painter.

I rarely paint flowers because I have my garden for that. The less I am able to work in my garden (spinal issues), the more floral shapes in my paintings have cropped up. The links between creating art and gardening seem even more powerful to me now. I see my garden as a gift, now requiring minimal effort on my part. I can see creating art as a gift as well, but cannot count on the abundance of nature to make the painting.

Remaining an Amateur

Creating art is different from gardening, despite their underlying creative links. The earth knows what it will produce from the plants and seeds in it. The canvas doesn't. So, the artist's intention and skill matter more. I'm far more demanding as visual artist than as a gardener. Perhaps there's some value in remaining an amateur (doing it for love) in all senses. You have fewer expectations regarding the outcome. You do things because you love the doing and learning, not because it's your profession with its own demands. The process gives you some joy. Perhaps because you know so little of what to expect as an amateur, you remain open. You risk trying new things to see what will happen, often with pleasing surprise.

The links between art and gardening are powerful reminders and clues for the creative process. The creative art I value is about conveying a vision or experience, rather than copying what's there. It's about connecting our inner and outer life. What gardening helps remind me is how generative just being inside the creative process can be. . Just doing the work, preparing the ground, putting seeds in here and there, seeing what works and what doesn't, weeding as needed.

You come to appreciate just being in garden at all. As with gardening in nature, I think one needs both to exert some control and to relinquish it in the process of an evolving artwork. Knowing when and how is the art of it! That seems a rather big life lesson too.

*A short video on Janet and her art was recently made by Art2Life. You can also see it here.