plants and the notion of home
Recently I was gifted an herbarium made by my friend and her children. It included a selection of common plants from the place where I grew up.
I look at the dried and very fragile flowers and stems, I touch them gently, I smell them. It immediately brings back many memories from my childhood and my family home.
Plants have the immense ability to convey the emotions associated with home and familiarity.
In communal gardens in cities around the world new arrivals often grow varieties of plants, which are widely used and cultivated in their own countries. These plants represent the heritage of people who chose to plant them as they vividly bring about the feelings of familiarity and comfort.
Plants we recognise from our childhood make new places feeling more like home, and planting familiar plants is often one of the first activities, we undertake when creating a new place to live.
Common flowers and plants bring the idea of home closer to us. They create well known and easily recognisable scenery. It is like a portable landscape, in which we can find ourselves and can relate to with a positive mindset.
In a series of photographs an artist Danh Vō, shows how common plants bring the idea of familiarity and home close to humans no matter where they are. The pictures were made in a garden in Güldenhof (north of Berlin) where the artist lives, but also in other gardens around Europe.
It is easy to recognise many of the plants from artist’s photographs. These common plants work as facilitators in helping people adjust to new and unknown places better. They emanate the feelings of safety and security and make unfamiliar more personal.
These photographs make me go back to my herbarium, I flip the pages with plants meticulously glued to the white paper and I recognise many of these plants in my adopted country: Dandelion, Ribwort, Knapweed...