Beyond the garden

            And so we start: first we prepare the flowerbeds, 15 cm high. If you don’t  a garden or an available piece of land, you might try a flowerpot or planter, close to a window. 

            The practice of gardening appears with the first civilizations. Mesopotamia has given us one of the Seven Wonders of the World: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which represent a remarkable effort to make architecture triumph over nature; in ancient Egypt, gardens were rigorously symmetric; the Persians introduced liberty and perfumed flowers; Greece had gardens similar to natural ones; the Romans created methodic, organized gardens that were integrated to  houses; in China and Japan, gardeners were only supposed to organize what was provided by nature, concentrating on the essential, whereas in Middle Age, with the construction of many churches and monasteries, plants were practically banned from urban life, having their use limited to functional (medicinal plants, vegetables, or flowers to decorate church altars).

Among the pioneers of what we know as picturesque aesthetic are Alexander Cozens, who theorizes and uses a method of picturesque painting which his son, John Robert Cozens,  continued to develop; William Gilpin, who, in 1782, creates a kind of illustrated guide of the picturesque; Richard Payne Knigth, who writes in 1794 a didactic poem entitled The landscape; Sir Uvedale Price, who writes between 1794 and 1798 Essay on the Picturesque – theory which he applies in the construction of his rural property in Hereford, USA; and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who uses the concept of Social Picturesque to connect nature and society, integrating people with their natural environment.

            The North American artist Robert Smithson, with “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic”, creates what we could call Entropic Picturesque. Presenting an illustrated brochure, as if it were a journal, Smithson describes in detail the events of Saturday, September 20th, 1967, when he visits Passaic, his hometown, in the suburbs of New Jersey. In this journal he reports the contact with a landscape made of the remains of an industrial area. This region seemed to contain a series of inverted romantic ruins, once the constructions and objects found hadn’t decayed after being erected, but became ruins even before being completely constructed.

Smithson finds and names as monuments some of the situations he encounters because he believes they reveal the immediate memory of the region, such as the Bridge Monumet over the Passaic River, surrounded by other smaller monuments made of the machinery and materials used in the construction of a new highway. Walking north along the river, he finds and photographs The great pipes monument, The pumping platform and The fountain. A few steps ahead is The sand-box monument, piece composed of small particles that, according to the artist, reflected the light sadly shone by the sun.

            A deep admiration feeling makes me think about this subject and create an occurrence as Secret Garden, with the purpose of arousing an emotional motivation in the people involved (beyond the garden).

            After sowing, water the flowerbed at least once a day, preferably at the beginning of the morning or at the end of the afternoon. The seeds will germinate in 5 to 14 days.

            I have been walking through squares and parks of Porto Alegre since November 2007, without a schedule or script planned in advance, and have distributed envelopes with flower seeds. These envelopes were specifically designed for this action and contain detailed instructions about planting and cultivating a garden flower. The name of the flower species they contain, however, is omitted.

            Every journey brings a new surprise: the way people friendly accept my approach, with thankful comments like:
 
I really need it!
Flower seeds, how nice!
I’ll give it to my mother, she’ll like it.
I’ll plant them in my farm...
I have many flowers at home!
Can I have another one?

No one questioned the nature of the work or worried about a hidden intention. Even the people who asked about the type of seed contained in the envelopes, who were told in return it was secret, only asked for one further explanation:

Could you please tell me if I need a lot of room or just use a little vase?

            The most touching situation happened at Praça México, a square located in northern Porto Alegre. It was a very sunny Saturday, January this year, and the square was full of children playing, families having chimarrão, young people listening to music and playing ball. I started the distribution at a point and later returned there, after having completed it. I sat down to rest for a moment and noticed that a family (a mother and her two kids) was planting right there the seeds I had just given away. I think this was Secret Garden’s highest moment, one that made the whole experience worthwhile.

By means of a simple gesture, anonymous and fleeting, I try to bring something new to the everyday life of the person who receives one of the nearly two thousand envelopes which carry a small secret that is only revealed by the tender gesture of cultivation. From the proposition also emerges the idea of a garden growing at distance, with flowers secretly sprouting, physically apart from each other, but all part of a bigger garden that is connected by caring gestures.

Flowers will bloom in 60 days during summer and in 70 in the winter. They attract butterflies.