Gardening - when one hears the word one thinks of old people: retired couples with nothing to do, aged devotees of Martha Stewart, or rich, matriarchal wives jealously guarding access to their garden and gossip clubs. Like so many other traditional domestic activities, gardening often feels like a relic, a holdover from a past of little relevance to the electronic, simulated, placeless world of today.
The gardens that we see on television and read about in newspapers and magazines reflect the ludicrous mismatch between the literal earthiness of gardening and the desires for perfection that have emerged as a part of our virtual culture. These gardens might as well be experienced on a computer monitor. They are completely managed, with no surprises. They are without depth, texture, and odor, separated from the environment around them. They are to nature what the Epcot Center is to culture.
Irregular Growth rejects the idea of gardens as museums. In a world in which consumerism is equated with virtue, gardening has the potential to become a subversive art. These pages are centered around the effort to realize that potential, reacquainting people with their humanity through a symbolic immersion in the natural world.
Come grow with us.
