Art Gardens: Place, Space, and Process

I worked the "The Territory (of Collaboration)" last night for an hour. On the one hand, I worked the garden with Jeremy - we weeded, I pruned the Smokebush, and got the hose running on the Enkanthius which had dropped a lot of leaves from a droughty summer.

But, there was other work done. I spent most of the time working between my point and shoot and DSLR. I hadn't really worked with my Canon (DSLR) all season and I don't know how to use the customizable features on the Nikon P/S. I went there to practice with those as much as anything. Then there was the garden naval. Its been a mess. The idea behind the naval is that it provides a measure  to compare the development of the space: the naval is left untouched to demonstrate the human control of the garden.

The naval however is allocated a specific 36" diameter space and in overgrowing its bounds was infringing on the manicured portion of the garden. But how does one handle this allegorical space? Its meant to be unchecked yet it demanded it for the "garden." My answer was to prune the seed heads and make a floral sculpture in the open lawn space with the pruned materials from other plants. Good answer?

My point here is not about "the what" result that was brought about. It is to think of "art gardens" - if not all gardens, as if we need to distinguish only certain ones as "art" - not as finished objects that are made but as spaces of labor and experimentation; the studio of the garden artist.