In our ongoing exploration of who gardeners are, where gardeners are, and all that they are growing in this world, this week in particular, I am delighted to be in conversation with a longtime and inspiring plantsperson.
Tony Spencer is the plantsman cultivator, naturalistic planting designer, and creative behind the Canadian-based endeavor for the last decade known as The New Perennialist. Under this name, Tony is also a writer, a digital content creator, and an ecologically minded, biodiversity-replenishing, planting designer self-described as "exploring the frontiers of naturalistic planting and garden design." An inspired rooftop garden of his was awarded top honors by the Perennial Plant Association earlier this year.
Even as a young child, Tony expressed a love of words, plants, and their allies. At six, he wrote a sort of haiku to a beloved willow tree and its companion caterpillars.
Tony's first career in marketing was a creative incubator but one whose corporate structure asked him to sublimate other life-giving instincts like working in his family’s garden and playing music. It was in his late 30s when his mother was diagnosed with macular degeneration, with a prognosis of full blindness in a matter of years, that he was brought back to the garden as a true source of meaning.
In our conversation, he talks about sharing his own learning process as a plantsperson and creative hungry to learn more, know more, do more with his own plantings, and he started with diving deeply into the work of Piet Oudolf, and Noel Kingsbury - leaders in The New Perennial movement. Tony also shares his renewed and catalyzing dedication to this source of joy to his mother – and himself.
Enjoy!
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Photos courtesy of Tony Spencer, All rights reserved.
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Thinking out loud this week...
Hey, it’s Jennifer,
Ahhh in this mid-mark through November, post-national elections here in the U.S. – Tony’s description of his emotional response to images and experiences of landscapes – specifically to the evocative, complex communities created in the work of some of the most influential plantspeople of our time, to say nothing of Nature herself – really resonates with me. Invites me towards a sort of turning to ground and ground-level communities in this late fall to early winter season.
Life in general, but maybe especially as a gardener in this life, is an emotional experience.
My response to this community of gardeners, plants, and community tenders within ears length of Cultivating Place this past 9 years – 460 episodes and counting - is emotional. A deeply heartfelt emotional response to a sense of unity within a cradle of profound and extravagant diversity, of community, of common ground in plants, of common ground in sensing that when we nurture and support the plants and plants people among us – in word, in deed, in recognition, in dollars and in thanks – we are in fact nourishing and incubating the resources and strengths we believe to be essential to a world we want to live in, to a world we want to pass to future generations.
When we live and garden into that, we are closer to being - as so many land-based and Indigenous cultures raise their citizens to be – the ancestors all children of this planet deserve. We are true Gardeners.
So I have been thinking a lot about the form that Cultivating Place grows into in the coming seasons. How does it serve the audience that finds it more fully? And I for one am feeling a real need for a little more consistent community interaction. I love so much the alchemy that happens in person – when I am in person in a place for a talk, for a CP LIVE event. And these last few weeks, in-person gatherings of community shared with me by friends and family have sparked me to wonder: should we as a group meet up online every now and then? To just say hi, to check in, to share thoughts, resources, strengths, and plants with one another?
Maybe this is redundant to your other groups, your garden clubs and books clubs, and lecture series large and small, but maybe there is a community garden gap here for some of you that could be filled by a virtual gathering every now and then – every quarter? I am not sure, but I figured why not ask you all? Is this of interest? If it is, what form makes sense to you? What topics would you like to have this community group offer, share more about, and brainstorm around?
Let us know – you can do this by sending me an email at: cultivatingplace@gmail.com or sending us a DM over on Instagram: @cultivating_place.
I like this idea of an occasional meta community garden club – looking forward to hearing from you if you do too!
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