Gardens: Fragments of Lfe and Loss

When thinking about gardens in Australia it is fundamental to recognise that before Europeans invaded, for thousands of years the Blue Mountains was Aboriginal land and home to the Gundungurra and Darug peoples. It must be acknowledged that in an Australian context, gardens, including my own garden in Springwood exists as a continuing act of settlement. As an artist and lover of gardens this is hard to reconcile. For me, what gardens can do is offer a sense of continuity and a shared place that speaks to Indigenous cultures of nurturing land and caring for country. But also, gardens exist to not only remind us of our communion with life, but help to confirm our connection with something much greater – planet Earth. As a contrived, thought out arrangement, a garden certainly has the potential to support a gardeners understanding of our need to live within the boundaries of Earth’s natural systems. This is something that Indigenous people managed – a shared, cultivated, abundant garden without fences.