The garden

I’m setting up for a couple of years work on the garden around the Studio. Jimmy, a landscaping friend of my daughter Elizabeth, came out on Monday, and we walked around the property in very fine, drifting rain.

The Studio sits up high on the hill. How could the landscape run up to meet the buildings? From the other perspective, how could the settled part of the hill run down to the creek?

We identified five areas that need attention, and after Jimmy left, Elizabeth sat me down and firmed up a timeline. Then a friend of mine suggested that a vision might provide guidance.

I’m inclined to begin things without knowing what will emerge, trusting I will discover as I go what works and what might be possible next. But time and capital are limited, so perhaps a vision could be something to come back to when we are thinking about what we might do: does this further the vision?

I went looking at early versions of the purpose of the Studio. From 2015, I found this:

‘Riddells Creek Studio welcomes artists, practitioners and researchers whose aims are compatible with ours … to move and live with intelligence and respect.’

The focus of the Studio then was education in somatic intelligence, but I was starting to get a sense of this place as a liminal space, a place between: between city and country; between the talking of people and the talking of birds and wind; between abstractions about ‘nature’ and direct experience of nature.

Over thirteen years, I’ve been setting up ways to be close to the natural world: the water points, the two outside fires, the Thyme Terrace, the walk around the meadow, most recently, a spot for sleeping out/lying about on the top of the creek bank. Places to hang out.

A few years ago, in desperation at the ragged state of the hillside, I planted a bunch of Prickly Moses. Those that took have jumped up, and the apples and figs I planted 12 years ago are there, but the hill still feels half done. Stepping out of the shed, my eye goes to the creek, out there, a distant view: what is missing is an invitation to step out down the hill and progressively deeper into the outside.

I’d like to be able to go outside as far as I feel inclined, then to make my way back inside, to think, write or talk, to eat, to get warm. Come inside to let things rearrange themselves.

In the course of looking after the Studio, I do a lot of moving between inside and outside. It is a help to mental and imaginative work. Being outside is a break from relentless human stuff and a mysterious provocation in the creative process. So perhaps the landscape vision for the Studio is this ……

a place for people who want to live with intelligence and respect, moving out to the wild world, moving back to the human world.

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A quiet little valley