Resonant Garden
‘The transformative effects of a resonant relationship always and inevitably elude the control and planning of the subject.’
Hartmut Rosa
A resonant garden is a garden co-created for the encounter between plants, humans, and other living beings. It is a place for vital resonance and the exploration and experience of interactions between beings from different worlds. For humans, it promotes reintegration into the cycle of life and the regeneration of senses and abilities that have been forgotten due to social pruning.
In the resonant garden, separatist discourses, classifications and practices are diluted; it is at once a laboratory, a workshop, a temple and a portal. It is a laboratory, where we work on ourselves and with plants, observing, recording and experimenting; a workshop where creative, artistic and poetic inspirations arise and we explore new languages and writings; the sky is painted and written with plants; a temple of contemplation in wonder and gratitude and of recovery of the sacred relationship with our surroundings; a portal to enter the plant world and through which plants enter us.
Plants communicate in the sky through terpenes and on the ground through their roots, mycorrhizae and bacteria. Over time, the plants in the garden become an organism that is increasingly integrated within itself and with its environment.
The garden connects with the trees and plants that surround it; it serves as a physical and energetic gateway to the micro- and macrobiomes in which it grows. Meditative, slow and multisensory immersion merges us with this network of Life. When we inhabit and live in the resonant garden, boundaries dissolve; we become part of it. It is not a landscape to be viewed by an external observer.
Resonant coexistence
We are grateful to those who have been there, to the plants that nourished the soil, to the rain that watered it, to the wind and birds that sowed it, to the sun that gave it energy, to the insects that pollinated it, to the bacteria and fungi that transformed what was dead. The garden integrates itself into the time and vibrations of the place.
A resonant garden is a work in constant evolution. It has no clearly defined beginning or end: the spirits and energies were there before we intended to create it, and unless it is covered with cement (and even then), they will continue to find their way.
The resonant garden is formed in respect and coexistence with the beings that inhabit the place, the plants that arrive and the conversations with the people around us. It is not a plan that attempts to adapt the land to a vision; knowledge and images spring from the cultivation of the land, from resonance with the plants and from the present moment. It is an organic practice, where planting, watering, contemplating and feeling are the main verbs before taking the next step in the garden. Accompanying the process from the heart opens up perception to subtle energies and vibrations and to the confidence in action that arises from the unity of living things.
The garden sprouts, entangles and blooms outside and inside. Slow and silence create space for unexpected resonances, worlds, times, and languages intersect, the palo negro speaks, the chilco sings, the matico dances, the lobelia invites you to discover the ancient trihue, the Arboretum and Hanecker Park, the menta de árbol calls to other plants, and the footprint resolves old dilemmas. The garden kindly shows Valdivia as a planet tree centre.
Resonant Garden La Huella
The name Resonant Garden La Huella comes from the huella that grows on one of its edges.
After several days of pure sunshine, I finished planting the capachito, the last plant of the garden's basic foundation. When it touched the ground, it began to rain. And the next day, the huella bloomed profusely: a crown of light and blue-white transparencies.
In addition to honouring the endemic plant, huella is a significant name for the work created in the context of the art and nature residency at the Fundación Estudio de Campo in Valdivia. Huella refers both to the trace or record and to the path that begins to form through use.
The huella garden is located in the middle of the city, in a corner invisible from the street. It is almost a clandestine urban intervention, situated between houses and buildings, on the roots of a very old chestnut and avocado tree, as well as other younger trees: trihues, maquis, a hazelnut tree, a tepa, and an ulmo. Accompanied above and below by these older trees, the resonant garden integrates with the energy of the local Valdivian Forest and the hundreds of native and exotic species that make Valdivia a plantae city, a tree centre of the world.
In Valdivia, the Plantae Kingdom dates back to genetic material millions of years old, from when the mega-continent of Gondwana existed and dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Ancestry preserved on the biogeographical island of the Valdivian Forest and active in the ancient Mapuche ngen.
The pristine energy of Plantae manifests powerfully in Valdivia, evident in the more than 700 centuries-old trees, the dozens of parks and wetlands within the city, and the reserves and gardens that surround it, following the rivers to the Pacific Ocean.
In Valdivia, the antiquity and presence of the Plantae Kingdom open up archaic and profound resonances in the relationship between humans and plants. The existence of another time, another vibration, another light, another breath becomes evident; the spirits of plant magic are felt, and the powerful transmutation of the elementals into life is visible. Valdivia is a privileged territory for exploring a new relationship between humanity and its non-human neighbours and resonating with the other Kingdoms.
