I am a gardener and artist in New York City. I am hoping to get some advise on Southern Florida plants.
My husband and fellow artist, Bob Braine, and I are collaborating with choreographer Jennifer Monson on a dance performance entitled Flight of Mind. Jennifer has been exploring ideas about birds and migrations for several years through the Bird Brain Project. In Flight of Mind, she is interested in how migrating birds are interacting with an ever-changing landscape – At each stop along their migratory path birds participate in sometimes very significant ways in the local systems and then leave. The dance is centered on this idea of “locations.”
Flight of Mind debuted at Dance Theater Workshop in New York City and will travel to Miami, FL in March and then to Helena, MT and Portland, OR. Bob’s and my part in all of this has been deeply collaborative as our work is primarily about landscape. For all of the performances we want the visuals to resonate with the audience – to bring to their minds questions and images about where nature’s place is in the (post)industrial landscape. The stage set and ‘props’ are a series of plantings (or gardens…) that will change in each city to reflect the local landscape. We are particularly interested in liminal spaces. What exists in these places that aren’t quite nature yet also are not part of the city proper? The specific plants we chose for the NYC performance were all common “vacant lot plants.” They were also all species whose populations in NYC owe their present extent and or existence to human activity. We partnered with the National Park Service at the Gateway National Recreation Area to remove the common reed (Phragmites australis) and mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) from Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge and also worked upstate to remove purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) and cattails (Typha latifolia) that were invading a privately owned pond. These partnerships worked great as not only were we helping the land(owners) by removing invasive plants, but we were also able to get the plants we were looking for – which in the case of purple loosestrife would have been difficult due to its noxious weed status.
Of course it was easy for us to portray our home landscape. Unfortunately neither of us has been to Southern Florida and the landscape certainly seems alien. (I’m really excited to finally go as visiting the everglades has been a dream of mine for so long!) We are at a bit of a loss as to what species of plants will resonate with the average gardener or the average Miami resident. Does anyone have any suggestions for potential plant canidates for our plantings? What plants represent human interaction with the natural South Florida landscape? Are there any areas in FL that we should visit for inspiration? If anyone is really interested please d-mail me and I can tell you more about the project. Thank you, thank you!
