Museum of the Home

How to Hear What Plants Have to Say

The Museum of the Home invited me to join What the Folk? Fest, a programme considering how folk practices continue within contemporary urban life. The small-group workshop centred on an exercise from Beyond Botanical that asks what plants might communicate beyond their name, practical use or botanical classification, and how these familiar ways of understanding a plant can limit what we notice about it.

Each participant received a copy of the book and worked directly in it throughout the two-hour session. Through journaling, drawing and making impressions from the plants around them, the workshop asked participants to consider their own memories, associations and experiences of plant life. The Museum’s Herb Garden, with beds organised around the different uses of common and uncommon herbs, formed the setting for the workshop.

For the event, I wrote a meditation that invited participants to question their first impressions and preconceptions, notice overlooked details, and pay closer attention to how each plant related to its surroundings.

Photography by Hallie Adukë

 Daniel the Gardener standing with participants seated and writing in the Museum of the Home Herb Garden. A workshop participant writing while seated among plants in the Museum of the Home Herb Garden. Close view of a participant drawing and writing in a copy of Beyond Botanical. A workshop participant reading Beyond Botanical while seated in the Museum of the Home Herb Garden. Participants reading, drawing and sharing work during the Museum of the Home Herb Garden workshop. A participant holding a sketchbook while seated among flowering plants in the Herb Garden. Daniel the Gardener speaking to seated participants during the Museum of the Home workshop. Two participants writing in different parts of the Museum of the Home Herb Garden. Three workshop participants drawing while seated beside planted beds in the Herb Garden.