It's little wonder that artists like Claude Monet have been inspired to paint water lilies floating on a reflective pond. In 1890 he bought a house at Giverny and in 1893 purchased a meadow near the property which contained a pond fed by the Ru River. He hired at least six gardeners who gradually shaped the meadow into a garden of willows, irises and water lilies specially imported from Japan. He painted the gardens around the house and then turned his attention to the water gardens, painting them repeatedly between 1897 until his death in 1926. In all, he produced more than 250 oil paintings of his lily ponds and admitted "These landscapes of water and reflections have become an obsession."  Monet's water garden and one of his paintings are shown above.

I would not be surprised if the gardener who designed my garden incorporated Monet's paintings of his water garden into his a vision for his own water garden, and I am the fortunate person to see his vision realised over 40 years later. Making my film prompted me to ask, who is the greater creator? - the gardener who lays out and stimulates nature to enable plants and animals to recreate his living cultural artefact decades later, or the artist who in a few hours or days makes an artefact that will never live or change. Perhaps its not something that can be judged, both involve imagination and creativity and that is enough.
But I do know that I am grateful to the gardener who invested his time, money, effort and creativity in creating a water garden that I can experience, enjoy and appreciate everyday, which provides a natural environment in which many plants and animals flourish, and therefore makes a valuable contribution to the natural world.

​I wondered how Monet would have painted my water garden and came across an app called Dreamscope that contained a Monet artist filter. Here is the digital painting that it thinks Monet might have created.

I discovered that Surrey has 41 different butterflies of which 22 are common, 15 are rare and 2 are regular migrants.  So far I think I have identified six varieties and another that has yet to be identified.​ Over a week I observed four varieties in the field - Meadow Brown, Gatekeeper, Marbled White and Common White which liked the thistles. I also saw another brown species that I wasn't able to photograph (one of the fritillaries?). By the lake I saw the Meadow Brown, Large White and Common Blue. I also saw the Speckled Wood and Cabage White in the woods. Different varieties appear at different times so I will keep warching for other varieties. 

​Interesting facts..
Butterflies taste with their feet. They have taste receptors on their feet to help them find their host plants and locate food. A female butterfly lands on different plants, drumming the leaves with her feet until the plant releases its juices. Spines on the back of her legs have chemoreceptors that detect the right match of plant chemicals. When she identified the right plant, she lays her eggs. A butterfly will also step on its food, using organs that sense dissolved sugars to taste food sources like fermenting fruit.

Adult butterflies can only feed on liquids, usually nectar. Their mouthparts are modified to enable them to drink, but they can't chew solids. A proboscis, which functions as a drinking straw, stays curled up under the butterfly's chin until it finds a source of nectar or other liquid nutrition. It then unfurls the long, tubular structure and sips up a meal.

Butterflies need an ideal body temperature of about 85ºF to fly. Since they're cold-blooded animals, they can't regulate their own body temperatures. The surrounding air temperature has a big impact on their ability to function. If the air temperature falls below 55ºF, butterflies are rendered immobile, unable to flee from predators or feed. When air temperatures range between 82º-100ºF, butterflies can fly with ease. Cooler days require a butterfly to warm up its flight muscles, either be shivering or basking in the sun. And even sun-loving butterflies can get overheated when temperatures soar above 100° F and may seek shade to cool down. 

Once it emerges from its chrysalis as an adult, a butterfly has only 2-4 short weeks to live, in most cases. During that time, it focuses all its energy on two tasks – eating and mating. Some of the smallest butterflies, the blues, may only survive a few days. The need to mate is therefore and urgent task.  Initially butterflies find each other using colour and sound. But at this stage a decision is made about whether to mate based on the pheromones that both sexes give out. In many species, the female requires the male to perform a dance before she will allow him near. He delicately flies around her, whirring his wings in the hope that more pheromones waft in her direction. If she is impressed enough to accept, she will change her posture, letting the abdomen protrude from between her wings. I witnessed butterflies dancing in many occassions. sometimes for just a few seconds other times for over a minute..

Perhaps the most significant cultural artefacts we create in the natural landscape are our gardens where we play at creating new landscapes within the affordances of the spaces we own or can influence. 'A garden is an actualisation of what city dwellers consider nature to be, a garden is organised wildness' (4). The very idea of a garden that we have created connects directly to Gillian Judson's third cognitive tool 'Creating or claiming special places/spaces'

'Perhaps the most important benefit of gardening is the freedom to establish and define one’s own territory, vital for many animals in creating confidence in the security of the immediate environment. In our own garden we can make our own decisions, give free rein to our creative impulses, make our own mistakes, and learn from them, change our minds, watch and observe the consequences of our actions, gain some insight into natural processes, and tie ourselves to the rhythm of the seasons.'(4:164)

Gardens come in all shapes and sizes, and when cared for by their owners they require imagination in designing the space,  the development of specific knowledge about plants and soils and their nurturing, and effort and resources to develop, maintain and sustain them over a long period of time. They are an important part of our everyday self-expression and become part of our cultural legacy as they are passed from one owner to another. Indeed, as gardeners we are as much curators (I am the third curator of my garden) as we are creators. And through our hands on involvement, they are also the means by which we come to understand the nature of nature as we engage in the process of making and maintaining. Neither a work of nature nor one of art we get to know when they have been finished; we must surprise them in the process of being created so as to understand them to some degree.(J Goethe cited in 5). A view that is shared by Seddon(4) who regards gardening not as a retreat but as an entrée into the world: ‘In one’s own garden, one is in contact with the whole globe, both cognitively and imaginatively’. 

​I will be trying out these ideas and using the approach of growing cultural artefacts inspired by my garden with a small group of education masters students from Beijing Normal University who will be visiting me later this week.  You can see what the BNU students made of the idea here.

Here is my initial experiment in response to the prompt - create a 1min movie (cultural artefact) inspired by the garden that relates the garden and gardening to learning, development, education and/or teaching?

I remember the first time I saw a dragon fly over a lake in a woods when I was about 8 or 9. It's size, beauty and the way it flew made a big impression on me. Now I am able to see them everyday if I take the trouble to ealk over to the pond. Its shallow water, water lilies and sedges, iris's and reeds growing around the edge make it an ideal environment for them. During the middle of the day when the sun is out and its not too windy, they scoot across the pond in a never ending search for small insects. I learnt from the secret world of dragon flies film that they fly at 50km per hour so its not suprising that I had trouble filming them, but I tried. I also learnt that although they live for about 3 years they spend most of this time underwater as nymphs before climbing the stalk of a reed and in the space of 12 hours, metamorphose into a dragonfly in order to reproduce.  

​We have at least three varieties of dragonfly - broad bodied Chasers with bright blue tails, blue and green Emporer's and a copper coloured Common Darter. The habbits of the chasers are different to the emperor. They inhabit a particular part of the bank and the bright blue males pose for the females on a reed or a rock. Females that are attracted fly close and the male the couples with them in mid air and off they fly to procreate. I haven't managed to watch an emperor dragon fly mate but today I managed to film one laying her eggs in the water.

We also have beautiful blue, green and red damselflies with males and females staying connected tandem style to aid the reproductive process. 

Its possible that different species appear at diferent times so I shall keep watching.

It's midsummers day and as I was walking around the garden I caught a glimpse of our resident deer with her new baby. The mother ignored me as I stood and watched from about 30m. 

22/06/18 Sometimes I feel as if the animals see me as part of the landscape. I felt it today as I watched the geese splash around exercising their wings in anticipation of flying lessons which I know must be coming soon. I think because I am spending so much time in the garden I am being allowed to witness things that a less frequent visitor might not see. Today I was down by the pond at around 5pm and as I approached the willow tree near the woods the mother deer shot out from beneath the willow. Jumped through the fence and romped to her hiding spot on the south west corner of the field. The day had been very hot and she must have been sneaking a drink from the pond.

In a bid to reclaim the field from the woods, I decided I would cut down the thickets on the south side which I did in March. I decided to leave half the field in its wild state just to see what would happen. Then I cut the grass short on the north side and in the first half of the field. I let some of this grow back so the grass is now about a metre long in about two thirds of the field. The species I have identified so far are couch, rye and cocksfoot. When the wind blows the grasses bend and turn in unison sometimes quickly sometimes slowly - the field reminds me of the sea in perpetual motion. Interspersed with grasses are weeds like nettles, thistles and cowslip and occasionally small flowers. 

Its June and the roses are blooming. We have an old pergola that is completely overgrown with roses. Not only do they festoon the pergola they are deeply entangled with the apple trees next to it. Over three of four weeks their presence dominates the garden and we walk out frequently to look at them. The beauty of the pergola is that we can walk under and amongst them as well as enjoy their presence from the outside. Not only are they beautiful and generous flowers but they support many insects that feed on them and off their nectar and these in turn help pollinate them.  Pollination involves the movement of pollen from one flower to the next, or between the sexual organs of the same flower. I noticed that, although I have several types of rose, the bees seemed to prefer one type - the pale yellow or white roses on the end of the pergola -  seeming to ignore the other larger and more colourful roses. I needn't have worried - less than a week later the bees were tucking in to the pink roses.. it was just a matter of timing and the bees were better than me at judging when a flower was ready for them.

This week we had the sad news that grandma Joan had passed away aged 95. Joan loved flowers and people. As I trundled round the garden cutting the grass and thinking of her and her kindness and generosity to me, I was struck by the simple beauty and generosity of the daisies that covered the bank of the pond. I think its the most beautiful sight I have ever seen in my garden and the memory and this film will always remind me of Joan.

‘Taking in the stunning beauty of oceans, mountains, or vast deserts is one of the most sure-fire ways to feel awe, a powerful emotion that plays an important role in creativity and psychological well-being’.
_Carolyn Gregoire https://www.outsideonline.com/2062221/new-science-creative-brain-nature_  

But we don't have to travel far to be inspired by nature - a field, a woods, a country walk or a garden is all we need.