Inspiration: The Cutting Garden, Scent & Memories

We have set a goal to use our creativity and imagination, and to allow concept and colour to inspire us to make. This week's creative project is more personal for me and is about scent and memories. Do you ever catch yourself smelling greenery as you would flowers? Probably not.

One of my favourite scents is bayleaf laurel. A scent I first discovered as a teenager. Thinking is was an uncommon variety of eucalyptus, it took me nearly a decade to find that same scent again. I searched for it until I found it though. Once again I was brought back to the design floor holding a few leaves to my nose and stuffing them in my pocket. I wanted to keep that smell forever. I still do.

We all know it is unique that memories are triggered by scent, but how? Incoming smells are first processed by the olfactory bulb, which has direct connections to two brain areas that are strongly implicated in emotion and memory. Interestingly, visual, auditory, and tactile information do not pass through these same brain areas.

We are in the height of summertime, yet so many plants bring back memories of all the seasons; a lot of them through scent alone. When I was young, my Grandmother used to keep her geraniums in her front window through the wintertime. I would lay on her chesterfield underneath that dusty, earthy scent. One of my fondest memories of her and her garden: My brother and I climbing the huge apple tree, reaching for higher branches to hang from and apples to munch on. Watching my grandmother peel apples with a sharp blade, the skin falling delicately into a single coil. Getting them ready to bake into warm apple pies. She loved growing Tiny Tims and would pluck the fruit early from the vine. Laying them out to ripen from green to red. Their heady, earthy fragrance may be best described as summer.

There is something to be said about having a cutting garden. Instead of cutting all the big beauties, like roses and dahlias, I examined greenery and plants. Most of which I have growing either in beds or in pots. They include trailing Geranium, Heuchera, Hosta leaves, variegated Willow, tomato vine, Bougainvillaea vine, Calamondin oranges, Coleus, and Crabapple branch. Rather than focus solely on design, I examined each specimen then inserted them stem by stem into a flower frog placed inside a shallow vintage bowl.

It is not the prettiest arrangement, but it's not meant to be. Let's call it an exploration for the senses. Give it a try. Walk through your garden and examine and cut. Touch and smell. Collect little bits and branches on your walk home. Put together unusual combinations of branches, leaves and vines. If this doesn't conjure any memories, know that you are at very least creating new ones!