Plant Thinking

enlivening knowing through drawing in-the-field

Abstract

‘Plant Thinking’ (Madre 2013) invites a reimagining of the vegetal world though a plant-centric rather than a human-centric lens. This paper reflects on a relational pedagogy explored in the development of a Post Graduate elective in the landscape architecture program at RMIT University where students learn about plants as living dynamic beings through drawing in-the-field. Drawing requires students to spend time in-the-field and slows down the act of looking. Students observed plant communities in two different sites in Melbourne, Australia; an established 19^th century ‘English’ garden with introduced plants in the city centre and a remnant indigenous forest within the suburbs. Both sites were of same geology and aspect but their different histories of settlement changed what the kinds of plants communities grew. In addition to doing detailed sectional drawings, both above and below ground, students read and reflected on philosophical texts which invited a reimagining of human and other-than-relations. The texts invited students to reflect their own relationship with plants and how they engage with plants in landscape architectural projects. After spending time drawing students began to perceive plants as living and within a larger set of relations, while at the same time enlivening their own capacity to ‘see’. This relational approach demonstrates a broader pedagogy in the discipline of landscape architecture which invites students to engage with plants as living beings rather than as static objects. This subtle but profound shift is necessary to meet the ecological decline happening in our midst.