I’m a gardener, artist, teacher, daughter, sister, wife and mom navigating in multicultural living. The practice of “control and letting go” as well as “trial and error” in gardening is in unison with my studio work whether it is calligraphy, painting, building, or digital production. I “find myself” in the garden. The earth grounds, the self-seeded plant (weeds?) educate, the life cycles of wildlife tells time, but the changing behavior of the garden warns of climate change.
Without this garden, I would be a “nomad”. The first thing we did when we moved to our current house 2005 was to dig out concrete pavement and planting beds to return the space to the earth. We believe in the strength of “soft things”. My garden is my backyard. It is in Cambridge, MA, and measures 50’ x 17’. I am a caretaker of 16 species of shrubs and small trees, 25 species perennials and 12 goldfish. Guiding principle in my garden is harmonious diversity achieved by trial and error poly-cultural planting.
The garden is an opportunity for escape from Zoom meetings (for my husband and I) and computer games (for my son), for stretching (for all of us and our dog), and to look far without our sight colliding with a wall. We chat with our neighbors from our garden to theirs.