Emily Dickinson was a gardener. She was also an iconic poet, and this week we enjoy a conversation with Marta McDowell to hear more about how the two callings intermingled.
In 2004 writer and gardener Marta McDowell published "Emily Dickinson’s Gardens – a celebration of a poet and a gardener" (Timber Press). Following up on new research and her own experience as Gardener-In-Residence at the Emily Dickinson Museum, Marta's newest work is "Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life – The Plants and Places that Inspired the Iconic Poet" (Timber Press, 2019).
Follow Marta on-line at: https://www.martamcdowell.com/.
Join us again next week when we’re joined by Erinn Carter and Georgia Faye Hirsty of Frailty Myths based in Oakland, CA Frailty Myth’s work is centered on "Reimagining Feminity and Building Power in ways that allow you and all of us to Feel your Inner Power, Grow Your Confidence, and Change the World." We explore how this work intersects with the garden world and some of our mythologies to be found there – as well as why upending these myths is good growth for us all.
UPCOMING CULTIVATING PLACE LIVE EVENTS:
- Sacramento, California at the Sacramento Perennial Plant Society on Jan 23rd and,
- Portland, Oregon for the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon’s Winter Lecture on January 26th -
Mark your calendars - I hope to meet you wherever you cultivate your place in the coming year
Thinking out Loud this week...
The sources of creativity and how our gardens are among the sources for this in our lives – this concept recurs over and over in this conversation with Marta and it reminds me how much artistry the garden offers out to us and inspires in each of us.
I am not a dancer, or singer, or painter, or designer, or poet – but the garden – with her seasonally shifting colors, her motion, her bird and bee song, her offering out of complex ideas in tiny encapsulated imagistic vignettes – for instance the pure white wingspan of the first snowdrop that opened in the garden this month – who among us no matter how plodding or homely or clumsy we may be does not feel the artistry of the universe as theirs in the garden?
Worth enjoying a moment of grace and gratitude for this first month of 2020.
Likewise, the literacy of gardening never fails to amaze me and the way that Marta McDowell plumbs these depths is inspirational.
I’m so excited to share with you my upcoming honor of being in conversation in person with both Marta McDowell and another gardening shero, Margaret Roach of A Way To Garden - the evening of March 19th for Oblong Books in Salisbury CT as part of their White Hart Speaker Series.
We’ll be discussing the gardening lives we lead and why and how it matters in our world at this point in time. Marta and Margaret are both profiled in my book, The Earth in Her Hands: 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants, and I could not be more thrilled to be together with them.
For more information on this event – make sure to check out the Events tab at Cultivating Place.com.
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