space for a garden

by Raymond Pultinas

Space is experienced by the body.   When we explore the space of the garden our bodies are always involved.  Our senses are awakened.   

There is the sudden presence of the sky and light and wind.  Immediately, we are in a different   context, not framed in the same way, on all sides, like the walls of a classroom.  We sense an opening to other than human means of existence. 

We witness the garden’s existence, its life in constant formation.   We see the life of plants and insects in relation to the sky and light and wind and of course rain and water.  The garden exists because of everything that is brought to bear on it.  

The agreement between the sun and the sky and the plants and insects in the garden predates the arrival of human beings on the planet.  It predates the agreement between humans and plants.  Human beings arrived into the world of plants and sun and sky, and this is why we still call earth our mother.  

The garden exists because of everyone who has contributed to it but it is created and maintained not only through the labor of human beings.   We can easily focus in the garden on a different species of life.  We are able to witness a species with which we have coexisted, inter-evolved, and inter-domesticated.

As gardeners we have set apart the area, planted some seeds and tended them until the plants that form develop the roots, seeds, fruits and leaves that nourish us.  The garden offers up its fruits and vegetables with unyielding grace.

To say that the garden is wild might be a stretch, but the garden has wildness within it.

What can a garden do for a school?  What purpose can this new space, The Clinton Garden,  serve in a large urban high school like DeWitt Clinton?