Iris leaves and rowen berry com­po­si­tion by Andy Goldsworthy

I think most gar­den­ers have a lit­tle bit of Andy Goldswor­thy in them. An envi­ron­men­tal sculp­tor, Mr. Goldswor­thy is coura­geous enough to cre­ate the most ephemeral of art. Many of his pieces exist only as pho­tographs. That is because his palette con­sists of water, ice, sycamore sprigs and many more sub­stances that melt, float, fly or blow away. He says: ” I couldn’t pos­si­ble try to improve on Nature. I’m only try­ing to under­stand it by an involve­ment in some of its processes. I often work through the night with snow or ice, to get tem­per­a­tures cold enough for things to stick together. You approach the most beau­ti­ful point, the point of great­est ten­sion, as you move towards day­break: the sun­light which will bring the work to life will also grad­u­ally cause it to fall apart.”

Don’t most ded­i­cated gar­den­ers feel the same way? The drive to take nature and exper­i­ment with it know­ing that the next sea­son or the next year may oblit­er­ate our efforts or enhance them. Some of my favorite plants are vol­un­teers, or they have strug­gled for 1 or 2 years before putting their best foot forward.

Some of Andy’s still work can be seen on the link below or you can google “Andy Goldswor­thy video” and see some of his phe­nom­e­nal work in motion.