To preserve and regenerate our ecosystems, we must first hone the awareness and attentional skills that are required to simply notice what’s happening on the ground. To that end How to See a Plant uses methods from art history, spiritual ecology, and embodiment practices to help participants overcome plant blindness. Each of the five modules is focused on seeing and experiencing a different category of plant life: grasses, flowers, vegetables, vines and trees.

Students will learn the art of closely observing and relating with flora by tuning their human senses to meet plants somewhere in the middle. Establishing relationships with the garden plants is not only how we learn to take better care of them, but also how we come to feel connected to the local rhythms of our ecosystem. A plant’s way of knowing is deeply embedded in the subtleties of the present moment as well as the cyclical turning of the seasons. The course centers wonder, intuition, and awe in addition to scientific observation and classification.

Classes include a guided meditation, ecological storytelling, formal analysis of plant composition, and an optional sketching session to invite new ways of seeing. Each module culminates in one-on-one time with a single plant in the garden where we can begin to converse with the wider living world.