New Herbarium

It is apparent that grass is green. However, being surrounded by this plant almost all the time, are we able to perceive its uniqueness? What can we see when we look at a clump, culm or leaf? What can we hear when we listen to the humming of a meadow, the sound of a tearing leaf or a culm stretched between our fingers? What can we feel when we run our fingers through the ears of grass or scrunch a leaf in our hand? Is it still the plant we know?

The aim of the workshop was to compose a new herbarium –  through the process of cautious multisensorial observation, participants made attempts to identify well-known plants anew.

I invited international youth volunteers and a group of school children to the garden in order to search for a common language that would be more intuitive and observation-based than the languages we speak.

The first step was to immerse themselves in nature – the participants smelled, touched, looked at, and listened to the plants. The impressions and feelings allowed them to create new names for the plants - the names were composed of letters, syllables, onomatopoeic words and associations expressed in Polish, Arabic, Armenian, Italian and English – everything that came to mind during direct contact with plants and other participants.

Photo credit: Ewelina Głowacz, Maciej Zdanowicz.