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The Traveling Plant: Preparatory Logbook

People were asked, in a caring hosting tradition, to tell the plant what it could expect to experience and to discover along its journey, what and whom (humans and other than humans) it may encounter. Choose a contributor in the menu (v) or browse by following the arrows < >

Dolores Steinman

Free to Fly

San Pellegrino Terme, BG, Italy
Scientist

Seeds – light in weight but heavy in promise and hope – travel much faster and easier than fully-grown plants. No passports, no restrictions, but a lot of luck and a sustained collective effort for a little sprout to become a plant and then grow and grow and grow.

I didn’t plant a garden. The woods are across the street and up the hill. Wherever you look, the eye is caressed by greens of all shades – the fabric of dreams.

Little by little, surprises arrived on my doorstep: shoots and leaves. And then, little by little, I started adding colour and fragrance.

After grueling months of loss, suffering and grieving, life around us bloomed again.

Spring evenings under the wisteria and honeysuckle canopy. Summer mornings protected by the laurel and ash trees. Butterflies and bees working and playing on the basil, oregano, sage, rosemary, lavender and thyme. Worms helping out the roots with ever renewed soil for reticent roses. Gorgeous peonies. Fragrant jasmine and wild cyclamen. Random wild strawberries.

Just like the seeds that travelled to my garden, our thoughts and dreams are free to go anywhere, meet old friends, discover new places. Settle even, if the environment is reassuring.

Partners

The Traveling Plant is a collective project created in 2020 by Annick Bureaud, Tatiana Kourochkina, Marta de Menezes, Claudia Schnugg and Robertina Šebjanič, and further developed with the following seed organisations Leonardo/Olats (Paris), Quo Artis (Barcelona and Treviso), Cultivamos Cultura (Lisbon), Sektor Institute (Ljubljana) and the initial support of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation.