Lecture Response: When is it going to get radical?

Reflecting upon his home, Derek Jarman once said an incredibly gorgeous, and fundamentally radical thing: “the boundary of my garden is the horizon.” For him, it was somewhat literal—look up Prospect Cottage and its beautiful landscape. These days, though, his words speak more poignantly to the collective duty of care and the responsibility we have to steward the increasingly frenetic natures that are stirring in our warming world.

Landscape architecture is the design discipline most enmeshed in the all encompassing project of nurturing and negotiating with these unruly and erratic modern natures. So, upon reading Jones’ lecture title, “A Radical Garden of Love and Interconnectedness,” I was excited. After all, such gardens are surely something we would all do well to work harder towards. Yet I’m not sure those were the spaces that Jones transported us to.

A particularly wise landscape architect recently told me that his is a field filled with vibrant brilliance and, sadly, a lot of mediocrity. It felt frustratingly clear where in the exuberant grass Jones stood. Working with indigenous communities is not radical. That is basic human decency. Working with affordable, reclaimed materials is not radical. That is how 99% of people operate daily. I refuse this as radicality. Today we urgently need to talk more honestly about our practices than that.

Jarman, Derek. Modern nature: the journals of Derek Jarman. Random House, 1992. P.1