I Dreamed A Garden

I DREAMED A GARDEN:  INSPIRED GARDENS — REMEMBERED, OBSERVED, IMAGINED 
 

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.  —  Marcus Tullius Cicero    

What is a Garden Dream?  

What is your garden vision? We’ve asked artists to show us gardens from their dreams, memories, observations and imagination for this exhibition, accompanied by a quote and statement giving insight into their inspiration.

This gathering of gardens of art and words exhibits their experiences of gardens of all kinds: edenic gardens, city gardens, childhood gardens, gardens of healing, reading, daydreaming — dream gardens, botanical gardens, exotic gardens and more. Our narrative follows a path from gardens fondly remembered to those that are joyously observed and then to those created in flights of imagination, knowing that creativity springs forth from an alchemic mix of all these fertile elements of soil, toil and soul.

We begin our show with Shakespeare’s dream of wooded gardens and floral undergrowth filling our banner above: “I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows / Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, / Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,  / With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine”   —Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream.    Dreams of Flower Shadows, the “Canopy” banner, is by Lois Bender, artist and curator.

Or perhaps at the very beginning with the Garden of Eden: “Then he commanded, ‘Let the earth produce all kinds of plants, those that bear grain and those that bear fruit’—and it was done. So the earth produced all kinds of plants, and God was pleased with what he saw. Evening passed and morning came—that was the third day.” ― Genesis 1:11-13