June 2011: Virginia Woolf: A Botanical Perspective
Post date: Jun 19, 2011 10:29:47 PM
The East Bay Smith Club welcomed Madelaine Zadik, Manager of Education and Outreach at the Smith College Botanical Garden on June 9 for Virginia Woolf: A Botanical Perspective. Madelaine provided a PDF version of Woolf's short story "Kew Gardens", as well as a collection of writings by Smith students, modeled after that story.
The program was inspired by an exhibit of the same name that was presented by the Botanic Garden of Smith College in conjunction with the thirteenth annual Virginia Woolf Conference, held June 5-8, 2003 at Smith College (which Kathryn attended, incidentally).
After a pleasant interval of chatting and delicious snacks (as always) provided by Aimee, a group of about 20 settled in Aimee's living room, where Madelaine started off the program with a slideshow highlighting some of the images from the exhibit (see link below). She also included some photographs from the same era showing budding Smithie botanists and the Lyman plant house. (With some poignancy, Aimee spied the window in Hopkins house behind the plant house which would later be her room.)
Especially fascinating were several slides adding historical context, such as the fact that the Kew Gardens tea house had been burned down by suffragettes in 1913 (photo linked below).
When we moved on to a discussion of the story, several book club members noted the very strong contrast from last month's book, Elizabeth and Her German Garden. While Woolf sets her story in the garden, the emphasis is on the people, and the garden is a stage for them. The plants in Elizabeth's garden are much more important to her than the people. This brought up the question, was Woolf herself a gardener, or only associated with gardens through her friends and relations? Sandy felt sure that she was not, and Madelaine indicated that while Virginia must certainly have lent a hand, Leonard was the primary gardener.
Discussion moved on to other topics related to the Smith Botanic Garden, and the many collaborative teaching programs that are flourishing at Smith today using the resources from multiple departments. One example is ENG 299, Green Victoria, which produced the students' writings also on the reading list. Another we discussed was Studio Art 285, Intro to Architecture: Language and Craft, in which students learned about architecture and biology using plants as inspiration for assignments (see link below).
Many thanks to Catherine for organizing, Aimee for hosting, and most of all to Madelaine for making it a delightful event.
Links:
Virginia Woolf Exhibit web page
Intro to Architecture: Language and Craft slideshow of projects