Beauty Manifesto: an Extract from ‘Super Bloom’

The following is an extract from the introduction of Super Bloom by Jac Semmler.

My Heart Lives in My Garden

My heart lives in my garden. In the garden I know who I am – my family, my history, my loves and losses, and my dreams for the future. The practice of gardening and tending plants has nurtured my relationship with the landscape and helped me form a sense of place and identity. There is a wholeness I feel being with plants in the everyday. It is a source of sustenance, strength, freedom, care and calm, and boundless creative expression. Learning about plants and how to nurture them together as a meaningful community within the garden is ever fascinating

It has always been plants for me. I grew up on a farm in a rural region of south-eastern Australia. I have rich memories of being a country kid immersed in the beauty of bushland and family gardens. These tough gardens, created by my grandmothers and aunts, were wonderlands of rural beauty.

In time I pursued a career that was filled with the outdoors, panoramic landscapes and big skies, but the practice of tending plants was missing. I made a career change to train and work with plants. My passions pulled me towards it and I found a new way of working that feeds a deep hunger for beauty and belonging.

Plants have become an all-encompassing part of my intellect, life and work. Gardening is my art practice as well as my life teacher. Through plants I have found a rich community to be part of. When I garden, I can feel in my hands the generations of plantswomen that came before me.

There is an everyday, heroic quality to flowers and foliage and the immersive experience of growing something with care. The relationships we forge with plants connect us to something deeper. The act of tending flowers and absorbing their beauty provides immense satisfaction and a wonder in the ‘super bloom’.

A super bloom is a natural phenomenon in which plants flower in such profusion that they transform the landscape, bathing it in colour. When a super bloom arises, it is a miraculous sight. Plants bloom with a maximum abundance of flowers and colour, applied in giant brushstrokes across hills and plains.

Every individual flower has a ‘super’ quality. Flowers are heroic in their fine details as well as big blooming events – flowers hold layer upon layer of beauty within them. There is the wonder of the bloom but also beauty in the bud, the foliage, the fading flower and in the structural seed head, down to the unique detail of the seed.

There is wonder in the lifecycle that plants transition through, the seedlings grow to maturity, the flowers bloom and fade. Like us, plants are growing despite the prevailing conditions.

Flowers are evocative, drawing up fond memories or creating experiences as you see and share these plants. Flowers call for our attention and presence to enjoy beauty in a hectic world.

The practice of caring and tending plants also calls to something heroic within each of us. As we find ourselves within the garden, be it a single planter or a large garden bed, we experience nature and the microcosm surrounding plants. We are part of something bigger. The metaphors and human lessons that gardens and plants have for us are rich.

Time with plants can feed us. It is an honour to witness the seasons and to be part of the process of nature in a garden. When I feel overwhelmed or angered by the modern world and a society seemingly full of injustice, coming home to the garden makes me whole. It is a source of energy to meet the elements. This deep joy is available to us all.

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Heartlands

This book is a guide to beauty in the garden. In this modern world, we hunger for beauty. We are beauty seekers on an endless quest to find and surround ourselves with it. We have an innate appetite for the wonder in nature, for holding flowers in our hands and tending plants. Natural beauty nourishes something deep within us. It is in our hands to tend and cultivate.

Let’s think about plants and gardening from the perspective of beauty rather than pure practicality alone. This book offers tools and techniques for cultivating a heart-felt space of your own. You do not need permission or expertise to begin – we all start somewhere. Gardening is about being part of the process and, most importantly, the pleasure you feel. This book is a call to garden in any way you can – through curious and inquisitive gardening, growth happens.

Every plant has its own beauty. Pause and let your eyes drink up the colour, texture and structure of any plant. Reach out and touch the texture of a leaf. Feel the softness of a petal against your palm. See the kinetic movement of foliage in the breeze. Listen to the sound it makes. In these moments, the world slows down around you and you feel whole. Natural beauty provides a deep source of sustenance.

To cultivate resilient beauty you just need to be open to change and the parameters of the natural world: consider what you love and think about how you can bring that to your space. It will not always be ‘perfect’, you will not always get it ‘right’, you will kill plants – I do –but it will all be alright.

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There is no right way to garden. It is a personal pursuit of pleasure. All gardens are worthy and wondrous. As we garden through small heartbreaks and great wonder, watching plants thrive and decline through the seasons, we are in partnership with ourselves and nature.

Gardens are personal places. They are cultivated from something within you. Nurture your own personal heartland, a space in which to create your own expression of beauty. Your heartland allows you to bravely become the maker of the beauty, announcing what you love and what you want to see more of.

There is so much more. Do you want a garden that blooms throughout the year in your favourite colour? Do it. Do you want to grow a collection of Pelargoniums to enjoy their diversity of flower and foliage? Do it. Do you want to grow flowers whose scent reminds you of past pleasures? Do it. Growing gardens which connect you to different places and past homes? Do it. Any starting point is a creative gateway. Find your way in. Seek out the plants that will meet your desires.

The women in my family – my beautiful grandmothers and their mothers before them – grew gardens of resilient flowers in harsh climates. They grew what they loved and what flourished. Their gardens were their heartlands. It wasn’t an exercise in fashion – it was unique and heartfelt.

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Maximum Plants

I am a maximalist: maximum plants and maximum beauty. I do love them so and I am always discovering more. Plants are so darn fascinating and meet the needs of my hands, heart and intellect. Happiness for me is when every corner of the garden is packed with plants and I am surrounded by foliage and flowers.

My gardening practice is plant-driven, and I gain so much joy by sharing plants with friends, family and community. With a bit of consideration and experimentation you can find brilliant plants for all parts of the garden in all climates. It is a process of bringing plants together to provide all-season delight.

I like to jam plants together in every corner of my garden. The more I add, the more opportunity there is to observe how they grow and relate to one another in an endless learning process of consideration, practice, trial and error. It is a home laboratory, a plant lab filled to the brim with flowers and foliage.

Nature has taken the reins in parts of the garden as plants happily self-seed. Sometimes it feels like I am more of a curator than a gardener, pulling and transplanting seedlings and choosing what will be allowed to rampage and what will be moved elsewhere.

What Will it Mean for You?
It could be filling pots with velvety Flannel Flowers (Actinotushelianthin) and delighting in their soft petals, before carefully collecting their seeds to share with friends.

Or you might replace your unusedlawn with a glorious explosion of Sunflowers, taking armfuls of thesehappy blooms to your loved onesand always having an abundantdisplay on the table.

It might mean growing the grasses and wildflowers of the bushland from your childhood in an abundance, or establishing a community of roses that echoes your grandma’s garden, or allowing Nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus) to run rampant through the garden, trailing up walls and into every corner to form a verdant and lush jungle.

Wild gardens sparkle with a chaotic and loose energy that allows me to feel I am at play and that there is unlimited room for wonder and the unexpected. I find the space to be free. The generosity of gardens and gardeners knows no bounds.

Some creative ideas in the garden may not always bloom. It is no secret that, like all gardeners, I have killed many plants on my gardening journey. However, with so many plants in play there are more moments of glory than failure. Growing maximum plants creates bold beauty, and this book is a guide to big-hearted gardening.

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Pleasure and Practicality

The act of gardening is the fruition of design, ideas and curiosity. It is both practical and a creative expression: planning and implementing until your space comes to life with the dynamic of the plants you have worked with. Gardening is growing and tending now what will bloom in the seasons to come. It is simply and intentionally tending a plant. Don’t let ideas on whether you are a ‘gardener’ hold you back. You can do it. Just start.

I often find myself staring at flowers in my garden. I meditate on their blooms and settle into their beauty. Pleasure abounds and time passes in these simple and precious moments in the garden.

Too often gardens are defined as a list of chores. We talk of ‘maintenance’ and ‘management’ of the garden, that gardens take a lot of work, with seasonal jobs to do. We describe them as a ‘labour of love’. But the practice of cultivating beauty goes beyond duty. In finding your heart in your garden, it may no longer be work. If it is ‘too much work’ and not enjoyable or satisfying, perhaps change how you are gardening. How can you enjoy the pleasure of gardening first and foremost? There is a deep-seated joy to be found as you tend your pleasure garden. Trends will come and go but pleasure is endless.

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Posted on October 26, 2022