SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm Alejandra Rusi, and this is the Rusi Hive. Conversations with people who treat their work and life as a creative practice. Today, I sit down with landscape designer Natalie Christ to talk about gardens. Not as tasteful outdoor decor, but as living systems that heal, seduce, and refuse to stay still. From medicine to horticulture, we move through neuroaesthetics, edible plants, bloom and decay as equals in designing for awe while letting nature lead. This podcast is presented by Rico Moresca. Thank you for joining me, Natalie Crest, and welcome to the Ruzy Hive Podcast. It is lovely to meet you finally, and I am so happy you are here. Thank you for having me. So I've been really looking forward to this conversation because it's one of a handful so far where the podcast really begins to wander into unexpected places. In this case, let's pretend it's a mysterious magical forest. Yes, which is uh more or less my terrain. So, ready or not, here comes your hype card. Natalie Christ, prescribed for the urbanized eye, the hurried mind, the soul estranged from the rhythms of nature, contains edible beauty, medicinal lore, Dutch ghosts, regenerative futures, and a working faith in reciprocity. Use as directed. Step into the garden, soften your gaze, and let the living world rearrange your certainties. Warning. May weaken your tolerance for ornament with no substance. So for your hive card, I chose a metaphorical Materia Medica entry because it felt deeply suited to your work. You have a background in medicine, which we will talk all about. And Materia Medica, for those who might not know, belongs to an older body of literature, uh, books devoted to medicinal substances, especially plants, and to their sources, properties, uses. And there's something beautifully full circle about that in relation to your practice. You describe your work as garden design in collaboration with nature, and yourself as a biophile ecosystem builder and writer. So today we are going to unravel what all of that means. So I, not being an obsessive person at all, uh scrolled through, looked at, and read every single one of your Instagram posts. I'm not a stalker at bum. Um, and there's really so much there. But one post in particular struck me as a kind of master key to your way of seeing. So for this first part of the conversation, I will read an excerpt from that post and we will take it from there. So you wrote Much of my youth was spent shepherding people into and out of this world. But I grasped those experiences more fully when I began to study horticulture. Here I found the other half of a living system I had already come to know. One marked by constant transformation and the quiet choreography of life and death. So when you say my youth, um, I'm assuming you mean your young adulthood. But who were you before medicine entered the picture? What was the kind of biographical outline that led you there?

SPEAKER_02 3:57

That's such an interesting question because I actually come from a family made up entirely of artists. I'm the only person in my family who went into a different field initially. I did spend a lot of time in hospitals as a kid because my grandmother, who we were very close with, was sick while I was growing up, and an uncle of mine also. So I spent a lot of time in that type of a clinical environment. But outside of that, my mother is a really talented artist. She's a pastry chef, my father was a chef. My grandparents, my grandma went to FIT right here around the corner, and she was a clothing designer. Um, my grandfather was a musician. All of my cousins are in some sort of creative field, all of my aunts. Um, so it was kind of a head scratcher for everyone when I went into healthcare. But I think I was always very interested in biology. I thought it was absolutely beautiful. Um, I've always been attracted to the natural world and very interested in the processes that keep things alive. Um, so that was always kind of in the periphery for me. Um, and it it does sort of all make sense when I think about that in the context of my environment, um, that it would sort of be blended with aesthetics in some way in the future.

unknown 5:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Is there an image from your childhood that now feels like an early clue to who you became?

SPEAKER_02 5:31

You know, I grew up in the Hudson Valley. I grew up like 60 miles north of here, um, in a very beautiful little town. And I spent a lot of time outdoors with my brother. The first image that came to mind was being in this little kind of thicket behind our house that I would go into. There was a little stream back there, and there were like chives and wild onions and things growing back there, and I would kind of pretend to be cooking with them. Um, I would go and pick them and sort of like make a make a little meal almost out of like what I was finding in the woods. But we spent a lot of time just outdoors in general. We would hike after school. Our our town was kind of right on the Appalachian Trail, so just spent a lot of time, honestly, probably training my eye and just absorbing the natural world in that way.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

So, what was your life when you were an RN? You mentioned that you were primarily involved in research. Um tell us more about that.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

So I had a kind of a zigzagging path at the beginning of my, you know, education, even in my young adulthood. Um I went to nursing school sort of because I didn't know what else to do. I knew that I wanted to do something that helped other people. I knew that I was interested in science and that I was good at it. Um, and I honestly at that point in life didn't see a clear path forward in carving out a life for myself in a creative practice. I didn't have it, hadn't gelled for me yet. You know, I always had a lot of creative interests. I loved to write, um, I loved photography, but there was no one path forward. And I thought, well, I excel in science, and so I can kind of take that path and just at least have some stability to think, basically. And I had a friend that was going into nursing school, so we went together. And I ended up after nursing school immediately entering a creative writing program at Sarah Lawrence.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

So I did it, I know.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Okay, right, and this is what I mean by the zigzag. Um, but so I went to Sarah Lawrence. I've I studied creative writing and photography and a lot of psychology while I was there. Was it fiction or creative non-fiction? Non-fiction. Yes. So I know, and it's funny when I see people's response to that, it's like, wait, what happened there? Um, so I didn't even miss a beat. Like I just went straight from there. It didn't work as a nurse, went straight to Sarah Lawrence, um, finished my degree there. And at that point, I think that I had sort of the maybe emotional maturity to then start working. I ended up at Cornell and I did work in the clinical research department, and it was a super exciting, it was a very exciting time of life because working in a research institution, people have such an inquisitive spirit. You know, you're just surrounded by people asking really important questions all the time and then digging and digging and digging to find answers. Um, there have been some incredible breakthroughs in the department that I was working in at the time. Um, we were studying like uh drugs that modify the immune system, so biologics. And I actually have some friends now that are on medications that we were that were in clinical trials, like when I was working there. It is amazing, yeah. But again, all throughout that time, um when I think about it, I was always asking the same sorts of questions, but in different environments, if that makes sense. Yeah. So I was always when I was in nursing school, for example, I sought out a faculty advisor to specifically craft this course for myself about um artists that were working in an altered state and how different uh forms of um meaning psychedelics, mental illness, neurodivergence, psychedelics, all of that. Um yeah, that's what led me here.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Yeah, we'll get to that.

SPEAKER_02 9:57

I was wondering about Yes, and then when I was at Sarah Lawrence, I was exploring, I did a lot of writing about neuroaesthetics, essentially, um, and how beauty in our environment can help heal heal people.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

So it's all sort of related.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

So before horticulture gave you another language for it, how did medicine initiate you to this idea of life and death as a choreography rather than a binary?

SPEAKER_02 10:28

I think that it helped me to not be afraid of death. I mean, I I was with people when they passed. I was in nursing school as a very young woman. I started when I was 18. And you're sort of just in the thick of things at, you know, from the very beginning almost. And it just helped me to see that it could be a peaceful thing, that it could be a meaningful thing. I mean, I I have also had the indescribable experience of seeing people revived from death. So it really helped me to frame it in in a weird way, in a very odd way. It seems like it has a quality of impermanence to me, in a sense, if that makes sense. So having those experiences as a young person was very um, I would say, mind expanding and just helped me to view things as more of a an ebb and flow than these sort of finalities that we might normally see.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

So your career pivot sounds less like reinvention and more like evolution from what you're saying. But how exactly did it happen?

SPEAKER_02 11:46

COVID happened. And during that time period, I by this time I had gotten married and I was living in New Jersey, just 30 miles from where we're sitting right now. But it gets very bucolic very quickly once you get past Elizabeth in Newark. Um and we live in this place still today that is surrounded by horse farms and just a lot of protected forest and things like that. So I started going outside a lot more and I started working in the garden, and and it kind of actually brings a tear to my eye now, even thinking about it. It was so healing for me. It just was like this revelation of what how different my body and mind could feel, how rejuvenating it was. And so I started really gardening in earnest. I honest we started essentially a small farm during COVID. Um, we were a little bit concerned about what was going to be happening to the supply chain of things. I think we all were a little on edge about that. And so I thought, well, let me try my hand at growing food. And I did that, and I grew more food than our entire neighborhood needed. So we ended up donating it to food pantries and older neighbors that we had and things like that. And I just really kind of caught this bug of like I understood what was happening from you know my background in biology. I could just see these processes unfolding in this such an incredible way, and to have my hand in it was like such a different experience to be able to kind of intervene and collaborate with nature and grow something that's gonna keep you alive is still blows my mind. So I was doing that, and then I ended up taking some courses at the New York Botanical Garden, and then from there I entered their horticulture program, and it was just that's what happened. And it felt someone said your career transition seemed to happen so seamlessly, and it really did, I guess. I don't, it's not that there haven't been bumps in the road, but it was just suddenly I was doing this thing and I was learning more about it, and it made sense to me. And I am have always been a person who craves being surrounded by beauty, and it really filled that inside of me, and and then people started wanting to pay me to do it.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

So up until COVID, you were a nurse. Wow. Yeah, I didn't realize it was that recent. Yeah, that's incredible. So basically, you just went to your your home and all of this happened, and then you and then I just never went new chapter. Wow. And okay, let's go back to that brief little curious interlude where you interned at Rico Maresca before moving forward. Yes. Um, how on earth did that happen? And please take us to that moment.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

Yes. So I was working for a surgeon who was a client here, and he knew that I was doing this research for with my faculty advisor on, yeah, basically. I mean, it really was when I think back now, it was on outsider art, essentially. And I didn't have the words for it necessarily then, but he was interested in what I was researching, and he said, You should really come and see this gallery that I love.

SPEAKER_03 15:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

And I did, and they hired me. And it was really, I mean, I was a gopher. I was just doing, I I have so many funny stories about me like sitting in someone's AMG, like downstairs when they were up here shopping for art. Or yeah, just you know, curry being a courier and bring I remember they sent me out with like an Alexander Calder mobile one time, and I was like in such a panic because I was in a cab with this priceless piece of artwork. Was it properly packed? It was properly packed, but I still just felt like how can you send me out in the world with this? I'm just one woman. Right. Yeah, and so many I feel like there was a couch that belonged to Nan Golden, or Nan Golden was buying the couch, I can't remember, but it was like a lot of little RB type things like that, but also just fabulous to have exposure to all of this, and it really resonated with me.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

So I feel like that was how long and how long ago?

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Uh it was about a year. Uh-huh. And it was 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

And you were an intern? Yes. For a year. Wow, that's a long internship. I mean, you know, just yeah. So before we ascend fully into myth, metaphor, and higher plant consciousness. Just kidding. Yes. But maybe not. Let's spend a little time in the reality of your day-to-day life and your method. Uh, what does a really good workday look like for you?

SPEAKER_02 16:44

I feel like so much of my work now revolves around the people, which is interesting. I really love getting to know my clients on a really deep level. Um, I have a full questionnaire that we go over before we ever even meet in person that has a lot of just sort of aesthetic questions, lifestyle questions, things like that. But the last question on the questionnaire is I would like to know some pieces of art, music, literature that inspire you. Something that has nothing to do with gardens.

SPEAKER_03 17:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

And sort of getting into someone else's head and figuring out what they want really, and sort of interpreting nature for them in a way. Um, so I love when I get to work with people that I really connect with on that level. I had a really great day actually last Thursday. We were doing a large installation, kind of a naturalistic woodland planting for this client who I just adore. And we were there, I was there, her husband was there, she was there, all the workers were there. We were listening to really great music outside and just kind of moving things around. We had 30 trees and you know, shrubs to plant, and we're just kind of arranging them in real time in this woodland. And it was, it's so awesome.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

That sounds beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Yeah, it was a wonderful day. So that's a great day. Um, solving an interesting design problem also really does it for me. Um, but I think just yeah, being outside, working with working with people to achieve a shared aesthetic goal is very uh invigorating for me, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

So painters go to the supply store for canvas oils and brushes. What is the equivalent of that for you? The wholesale nursery.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

It's an amazing place. Um, it really is. I have a couple that I absolutely love. Also, I have to say that I I do sometimes in responsible ways take things from the woods. So if there are bulbs that, you know, have naturalized in the woodland, sometimes that there's a really impressive um colony of snowdrops in the woods near where we live. And I feel like sometimes like taking a little thing that's just sort of already growing in the natural world and hasn't been intended for like cultivated use adds this very special quality to a garden. So sometimes I'll dig up little violets or snowdrops, things like that. But yeah, I mean, I spend a ton of time in nurseries just looking at, you know, new things that they've procured. It's interesting with plants, they're constantly breeding new and interesting things. So it never really ends. The color, you know, you might have a plant that you love working with, and then suddenly it's available in like two different colors. It's so interesting. It's it's really a living palette that's evolving all the time.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Yeah. So when you begin designing a garden, what tends to come first? Mood and atmosphere, narrative, ecology?

SPEAKER_02 19:59

It is so hard for me. That's kind of all happening at one time in my brain. Because I I spend a lot of time laying the groundwork for all of my projects. I do a lot of really in-depth research on what is going on with the ecology in the area. That's paramount. But also, like I said, getting to know the people that are living with this ecology and what it is that they hope to experience on that site. I have a little postcard that a friend of mine wrote years ago before I ever was even in garden design, because I was always very interested in creating environments and experiences for people that would delight them. And she wrote me a little postcard to thank me for a dinner or something. And she said, You're a true ecosystem builder. And I thought, Oh, that's part of your description. Yes, that's why it's there, because I thought, oh, that is what I love doing. So I'm I'm really thinking very holistically about all of that stuff. But I would say that the first step is just walking the site with the person who lives there and getting that embodied experience of being with them and experiencing it through their eyes. Yeah. And just really being observant. That's lays the groundwork for everything else.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Yeah. So about everything else, um, how do you develop a visual language that feels unmistakably yours when the medium is alive? And how does that change your relationship to control as a creator?

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Fabulous question. I think my visual language is invisible. Honestly. I don't really think, and and maybe this is not the answer you're looking for, but I think that it is so important in doing this work well and in respecting the environment. I think it is so important to have a light. Hand in all of it. So many of the gardens that I've done, they're not just it's not just one style. It's really so site responsive. And I don't think if you've looked at a cross section of my work, you would be able to see any one signature thing unless you really knew what you were looking at. And what you would see then is someone who is just paying a lot of attention to what's already going on on the site. If that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

That makes total sense.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

It's like I don't I don't want my hand in there.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Right. I just want it to be you're not gonna be shaping any trees like poodles. No I try really hard to stay away from I try hard to stay away from poodle trees. It's too bad. Yes, at all costs. I do like poodles. Um so you speak about honoring bloom and decay as equals. Most of us are trained to celebrate one and resist the other, both in nature and in ourselves, to be frank. What new windows of meaning become possible when decay is not an interruption of the composition but one of its governing principles?

SPEAKER_02 23:12

The closer you start looking at nature, the more you see beauty in every little thing. And so I think that if we're not paying attention closely, the things that we our eye gets lazy and the things that we interpret as beautiful are just the showstoppers, just the spring blooms, the you know, the the really eye-catching, the showy stuff. Honestly, one of my favorite times in the garden is in the dead of winter. Because there's all of this, if it's been well well designed and well thought out, there's so much skeletal beauty, all of these seed heads or you know, flower skeletons. I think of even just like, I don't know if you get the opportunity to see this in the city much, but the way that hydrangea, if you leave a hydrangea and don't cut it back and just let it, you know, do its thing over the winter when it's covered in snow, it's just one of the most extraordinary, it just looks like a ghost of us. Right. So you've seen it. I try really hard to point those things out to people that I work with so that they're able to appreciate the more subtle beauty of a plant as it begins to decay. And and I do honestly think that that helps us to reframe a little bit the way that we look at ours ourselves too. I appreciate that you said that because we're always sort of in flux, and you have to appreciate all of these different nuanced states that you're in to get the whole composition.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Yeah. So you wrote something to the effect of beauty as being something that happens in the flux of life. Um, and I am intrigued by the idea of beauty as something you can't really preserve or bottle up. Um, you can document it, you can simulate it, but you can't capture it. Like not really. And that's just not the way it works. So that directly connects to what you just said. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:22

And I think it's interesting. I don't know if we'll maybe get to this later, but even just talking about photographing gardens. And I need to be better about that because I know that it's important for having a portfolio. I feel like it's so difficult to capture. It's it's like you had to be there. You had to be there. And I feel like it just does it, it does a disservice to the that's so interesting. Yeah, to the environment. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Oh no. But it's just like it almost even when it's a great photo, to me, it always falls flat. Yes. So I mean, literally, it's right, you know. The birds, the you know, video is maybe a little bit better, but I don't even know if that's that does it.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

So your work is immersive by definition. Is there a core feeling you hope people carry away from it, or does that shift from project to project?

SPEAKER_02 26:21

I do hope that people experience peace and I hope that they experience awe. Those are the two things that I'm I'm sort of always going for and have on the the back burner.

SPEAKER_03 26:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Um, I want there to be moments for reflection and surprise, and I want people, I want people to feel small in a good way. Yeah. I think it's important. I mean, it's even from just a physical and mental health perspective, um we are living in an environment right now that gives sort of an overblown sense of importance to things that are ridiculous, honestly. Um, that have nothing to do with real life, that are so abstracted from reality. And I think when you get in there, you get in the garden, you get outside, it can really help you to reframe problems that you might be having, different struggles, different disappointments. It's it's very clarifying.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Yeah. So the human body and the natural world are not just mirrors, they are um intertwined living systems, each revealing something about the other. How do you think about that symbiosis, not as a metaphor, but as a lift reality?

SPEAKER_02 27:46

I think about it all the time. So it's interesting, like we're in a gallery here surrounded by these amazing works of art, and there are certain things about viewing art that activate certain neural networks in our brain. One of them is the default mode network. It's a it's a loose daydreaming kind of network, but it is very self-referential. And art, in a very real way, helps us to understand ourselves better when it's something that really touches us. Landscapes, on the other hand, they activate similar parts of our brain, but it's a much less personal experience. It's almost like viewing art shows us more about what it's like to be ourselves, and viewing being immersed in a landscape in a more diffuse way shows us, helps us to feel more of just our humanity. Because it's it's interesting, like people have such varying, varying perceptions on what is what what type of artwork appeals to them. But it's much more um, there's much less variety in those preferences when it comes to the natural world. We all tend to agree on what is beautiful in nature. And so it taps us into just this sort of like collective consciousness of what it what our humanity is. It's sort of like a primal experience when you're when you're out there, when you're in like a really great garden, it taps you into this sort of universal, human, very grounded part of yourself. And I think that that is just, I mean, it's it does wonders for people mentally and emotionally. I'm constantly thinking about the interplay between those two elements. I mean, even when it comes to, I don't know, if if you ever have a chance, there's an absolutely fabulous book called The Well-Gardened Mind by a woman. She's fabulous. She's married to a really well-known garden designer. She's a clinical psychologist. Her name is Sue Stuart Smith. And she talks a lot about the cascade of wonderful things that are happening in your mind when you're in a really beautiful, like cultivated natural area. Um, it actually activates similar processes in our brain to like falling in love. So it's it's just flooding you. Yeah. It's like wonderful feeling. And then if you actually interact with it and get your hands in the soil, there are just certain types of like, you know, microscopic bacteria and fungi that actually help your body to produce serotonin. Wow. So it's it's quite literally like medicine in the earth that your body is making to enhance your mental health.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

Well, that's a beautiful answer to that question. Uh well, looking at it from a different side, you've spoken about integrating edible and medicinal plants into ornamental designs. And this is a very elegant way to dissolve the distinction between a garden as an aesthetic experience and a garden as something that can also nourish and repair. What kind of world becomes possible once those two categories stop being separate?

SPEAKER_02 31:02

Yeah, I think I think that that is the amazing thing about working with nature because in when you're looking at the natural world, like form and function are not really intention. They're not they're not in opposition to one another. Like when we experience so much of what we experience as beauty in the natural world is essentially just signs of good health. Like in people, Rhina Landsky, it really is. And so when you are approaching it in that way, it's like you're if you are paying attention to the whole system, and by that I'm I mean the people that are going to be there too, and how they're going to interact with it, and especially when it comes to things that they can perhaps eat or use as medicine, it just becomes this like elegant cycle that you're looking at. And and you are just sort of kind of like I said before, just like gently in shepherding it along in a way that is hopefully not so noticeable. But you know, integrating edible and medicinal plants is just such, forgive the expression, a no-brainer to me. It's if I can put something there that is beautiful and that you can also eat. Like, why would I not do that? So, really, edible gardening. Yes, I really do look for every opportunity to do that. And I think that that's also on an emotional level, it makes people feel I don't even know if they're aware of it, but I think it's like almost promotes a sense of security. Like you're here, you're surrounded by all these. You belong, and and you know what? Like the land is providing for you. You can go over to that tree if you're hungry and eat something and have this experience with um, you know, in this place that you live. I think it's yeah, I don't know if that answers your question.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Yeah, it does, absolutely. So your work seems to move very naturally between um the physical and the philosophical, between making gardens and thinking about what gardens mean. Um, where does writing fit into that for you? Do you think of it as a parallel practice or as a space where certain intuitions about the work come into focus?

SPEAKER_02 33:30

I would probably say the latter. I have always loved to write, but I think this practice gave me something to write about. And I view it as all very integrated. Writing has always helped me to just clarify my thoughts. I'm sure you find it to be very similar. And I think that the things that inspire me the most in my work actually do not tend to be other gardens. Although I do, I mean, I love visiting gardens. We we travel a lot and I always make a point to see whatever interesting gardens are there wherever we happen to be. But I think that philosophy has inspired me a lot more. Um, and and and and just finding inspiration in different great thinkers and how they approach their relationship to nature um is really something that so much has been said. Yes, I mean, I actually was just there's a really fabulous book that I'm I'm still working through it right now because it's pretty dense. It's called Concilience. I don't know if you've ever heard of it by Eo Wilson.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:45

And it's basically his whole philosophy was that all of the humanities and sciences are really related. It's there, it's almost like um these different disciplines that you might go to university to study. Oh, I'm an English major or I'm a biology major or engineering or something like that, are all underpinned by the same natural laws and therefore are one body of knowledge. And so it's sort of almost like the state lines, there it's there purely for administrative purposes. It's not actually how things are in reality. Right. Um and so I find so much inspiration from even just a book like that and how like you can draw, you can just draw from so many different disciplines in your work. I think a lot of people sort of get stuck in, okay, well, you know, I'm I garden and so like I'm looking at it. Yeah, like I'm looking at other gardens, I'm looking at other landscape designers, and it's almost like that's like the last place that I look for inspiration. Right. I don't know. I I will I will find more inspiration for my work in a piece of music. I have a client that sent me the most fabulous mood board for her garden a couple of months ago. There, I think was one plant on it. Everything else was just free association images that she conjured up the emotion that she wanted.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

So you mentioned earlier neuroesthetics, which is not exactly a low-key dinner party word, um, but does get it something fascinating. Uh, why certain spaces and forms seem to move us, um, regulate us, even restore us. Did that interest begin with your own lived experience or in the patterns you started noticing in the work?

SPEAKER_02 36:39

So kind of a combination of both. I I I I would say actually that it did stem from my own lived experience. And then I got more curious from there as to why I I always enjoyed the work that I did, but it was quite stressful. And I noticed that I would come home from that and feel like you really have to decompress. I could be out in the garden all day doing the absolute most brutal physical work, which I don't even get an opportunity to do as much anymore because I have people that work for me now and are doing a lot of the installation work. But I could be out there, I do get my hands in it as often as I possibly can, and be so tired to the bone at the end of the day. And I go home and take a shower and I feel like a million bucks. Our bodies are so well suited for physical stresses, moving heavy things, um, you know, digging in the dirt and and cultivating. It's the prolonged mental and emotional stress that so many people are exposed to in their workplace today that I think is really what is so damaging.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 38:01

Um, and so I started getting really interested in that difference and why I could labor for so long and feel so fantastic. Um, and just sort of what was happening inside my body, or just the feeling that I had when I could make a really beautiful meal out of all things that I helped to grow. It was just this sense of rightness. I don't know, it was like all is right in the world. Yes. And and so I started, obviously, I have a very uh hard-to-ignore research inclination. And so I really started delving more into that and trying to understand what exactly is happening here, or why do I feel this overwhelming sense of peace? I think of this house we rented a couple of years ago in Shenandoah, and I woke up and just looking out over this valley, it's like you just weep. It's so beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

And I was like, what's happening inside me?

SPEAKER_00 39:04

That is so great. You know, it really is about asking ourselves, why do I feel this way? How do I feel it more, right?

SPEAKER_02 39:10

Yes, like having the privilege to really bring people into relation into more of that relationship with nature is like, oh gosh, it's it's just such a wonderful thing.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

So is there anything in your life other than writing and reading that nourishes your work from a strange angle, like some interest, ritual, fixation, or hidden enthusiasm that doesn't obviously belong, but absolutely does?

SPEAKER_02 39:40

The first thing that comes to my mind is cooking. And it but it is related. So I don't know if that's quite what you're looking for, but I am often, I get very excited over the winter reverse engineering things that I want to cook in the summer, dishes that I want to experiment with making when I'm ordering seeds.

SPEAKER_03 39:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:57

So I'll be looking through the catalog and even just thinking about how different things will look together on a plate. Um, I mentioned my whole family, my both my parents were in you know, in the restaurant industry.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

And so that's really are you Colombian?

unknown 40:16

No.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

We're finding that out of the way.

SPEAKER_02 40:23

Wow. So yeah, I'm half Colombian, half Italian.

SPEAKER_00 40:26

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 40:27

But yeah, so thinking about that, I I don't know that it's that tangential, but just I I mean, I think my interest in fine art is uh is also definitely in there.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

Well, I was really hoping for something like competitive mushroom foraging, midnight falconry or like wish witchcraft. Okay, wait a second. You didn't fail the question. It's okay.

SPEAKER_02 40:53

I do so we did go on a falconry excursion last September, and it was one of the most amazing experiences of my home.

unknown 41:02

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 41:03

So I had this um what kind of bird was it? I'm trying to remember now. It was a type of hawk that landed right on my head, like this. And it was just, I felt like I had been anointed.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

Wow. It's just like this is the most important thing. You are the bullshit.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

Yes. But we had been out in a field with them and just sort of fly flying them and feeding them, and then on our way back, this bird just decided to hitch a ride on my head.

SPEAKER_00 41:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 41:31

And it was what an honor. It was an honor. And I I wish, I hope that becomes those types of interactions with animals are really special to me too. And I hope that that can become more integrated in my life as time goes on if we get a farm or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

But all right, now shifting to a more contemporary lens. So many of us have been swallowed by the digital world. And it's hard to encounter nature without bringing a pretty overstimulated nervous system. What are your thoughts on gardens and landscapes being consumed as images first rather than environments? I'm conflicted about it.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

Because I, like most gardeners, am a total sucker for a beautiful garden book or a beautiful garden magazine. I mean, I it's it's eye candy. But I think abstracting gardens in that way, it does, I guess, sort of turn them into just a different, a different art form. And that's fine too. I think I'm just so biased towards experiencing them in person and wanting people to have more of wanting people to be more present. And I think it does, it makes me a little sad. I'm guilty of it myself, but you know, sometimes you'll be in these really amazing gardens and people are just it's you know, yeah, it's like it's this what is it? It's it's like a greed that we have or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

It's a compulsion to document for your little audience on social media.

SPEAKER_02 43:11

Right. Okay.

unknown 43:12

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 43:13

Um, yeah. So in a weird way, we've made this experience about like self-promotion somehow.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

Is that sort of what you're saying? I mean, maybe. Yeah, it's possible.

SPEAKER_02 43:27

Like I'm here and I get to experience this beautiful thing, and I don't know. I try really hard to put my camera aside, at least for my first experience of a new garden. I think it's important. And I think it does make me sad that it's I said said to a friend of mine a couple of months ago, I feel like in museums and gardens people should be required as visitors to wear things that blend in with the landscape.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Feel like or like in museums, we should all have to wear neutrals.

SPEAKER_02 44:03

Everyone wears black. Everyone just wear black because inevitably you're in a garden and there is someone in like a bright red jacket that is like, you know, in whatever picture you want to take. But yeah, I think it's I think to have those embodied experiences is really where it's at. And sure, it's nice to take photos to remember something by or to put on a mood board or to turn to for inspiration. But I am just in general a little bit turned off by it, it's like turns it into a commodity or something that we're like grabbing after.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

Yeah, digestible little nugget of something. It flattens it, it compresses it, it's easy, you know. I think spaces that engage all of our senses and that take time to digest are more important than ever. If you imagine someone doing what you do a hundred years from now, what do you think will have changed and what do you hope will still remain?

SPEAKER_02 45:00

I think so many more people will be doing what I'm doing a hundred years from now. Um that's my hope, at least. Because I think that without getting too into the weeds on it, I just think that as as much as we are benefiting from certain interesting types of technology that are coming to the fore right now, it's just my personal opinion that it does not seem really sustainable, what's happening in any sphere, um, and especially from an ecological one.

SPEAKER_03 45:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 45:40

And I really think, I mean, remember back what happened during the pandemic, how when all of those flights were grounded, remember the air quality was just like beautiful and fresh?

SPEAKER_03 45:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:51

So I think just like our bodies can be a bit smarter than our minds at times, oftentimes, yeah. Um, I think the earth is just will outsmart us all. I really do. Um, I think that it has built-in homeostatic mechanisms, and if we are messing with it too much, it will find ways to shut that down. And so I think that um humanity may have to learn that lesson the hard way. Um, but I'm here for it. And I think I think it will benefit everyone if people. I mean, I hate I hate to think of it as even like a regression, but look at what has happened to society, like on a on a very basic level, just we're not cultivating the earth as individuals. Like we've completely lost sight of where where is our food coming from, where where's our medicine coming from, all of these things, right? But then on a societal level, we're not living in these close-knit tribal groups anymore with a shared purpose and a shared investment in our survival. So it's like people get, you know, they move away from their family for college, they meet someone at college, then they marry that person or end up partnering with that person, and they marry some, they move somewhere else across the country or across the world and start a family all by themselves, some with like no social support and no, so we're like so disconnected from the earth, we're so disconnected from these like small units that sustain life in a better way and a healthier way. And then suddenly everyone is faced with these problems, like who's gonna take care of my aging mother while I'm working full-time, or who's gonna watch my kids? It's like those things didn't really exist in a primitive society. It's like your your grandma is helping you raise your baby, and then your baby is helping take care of her when she gets old, and all of this kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 47:51

That's so tough to start families nowadays. It's like hard.

SPEAKER_02 47:54

It's so hard for people. And I my heart breaks for humanity in that way. Um, but I think I know that's probably like so only peripherally related to your question, but to me, it's like all one thing. It's just like I hope to see humans living in a healthier way, and I think that like the trajectory that we're on right now is like not that, but I do have this trust that it'll course correct, it will course correct.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

Wow, it might be painful, it always is.

SPEAKER_02 48:28

So I think that I would hope that more people are doing my work with their loved ones in the future.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

I hope so too. Okay, so I thought we'd close things out on a dreamy, whimsical note. So if you had to choose one plant, flower, or growing thing for each season, something that captures its mood, scent, spirit, what would it be and why?

SPEAKER_02 48:53

All right, well, I guess we'll start with spring because that's where we are right now. And I would say the cherry blossom. Okay. Um, and I feel like it spring starts off so slowly with all of these sweet little bulbs and ephemeral plants that pop up in the woodland, and then suddenly when the flowering trees start popping off, it's like that feels like the moment to me.

SPEAKER_00 49:15

It feels like it happens from one day to the next.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

Yes, almost overnight. Yeah. Um, so that would be spring. Summer would be a tomato, tomato plant. That's perfect. Yeah. Um fall, I feel like I just love what happens with all of the native asters in the fall. Um that's a beautiful moment to me. And then I mean, obviously, I grew up right here in the Hudson Valley, just the turning of the foliage and the red maples and all of that is really breathtaking. I didn't appreciate how special that was as a kid. And then, like, people come from all over the country and all over the world to see Fall in the Hudson Valley. And then winter is what's winter? Maybe it's just the seed heads. Maybe it's just like I'm thinking right now of like when Echinacea, you probably see it at the on the high line even. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What echinacea just has those beautiful kind of little seed head orbs that are like black polka dots, and then when they get covered in snow. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

If you had to design a garden for a single emotional state, not a client, not a house, just a feeling, what feeling would most interest you and what would the garden be like?

SPEAKER_02 50:34

I think that the the most interesting feeling that I would be going for would be awe. And I think that I would try to do that by playing with scale. I don't know. I can see it in my mind, but I feel like that sensation of of just moving through things that feel enclosed and then open up, and then there's a there's an interesting garden in near where we live. Um it's a woman who has a peony farm, actually. But they grow sort of in dappled light, and it's there are a lot of really tall canopy trees there, and she calls it the cathedral when everything is in bloom. And that sort of feeling, I think you do, you walk into it, and you just feel like what a what a place, what a destination. But designing for awe, I think I try to put a little bit of that in everything that I do.

SPEAKER_00 51:36

Is there an impossible garden that you carry around in your imagination, like a dream landscape that could not fully exist in real life, but says something about what you are always chasing?

SPEAKER_02 51:50

Yes. So have you ever heard of the Elgin Botanical Garden?

SPEAKER_00 51:56

No.

SPEAKER_02 51:57

Okay, so the Elgin Botanic Garden was the oldest botanical garden in the United States, the oldest public botanical garden in the United States. It was at the site of Rockefeller Center.

SPEAKER_00 52:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 52:11

So it's buried under Rockefeller Center. And yeah, it was founded by this man named David Husick, who was a physician and surgeon at Columbia University, and he used that garden to teach Materia Medica. He was the personal physician of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. And he founded this garden to teach the medical students at Columbia all about medicinal plants. And so this garden it was, it fell into disrepair, it was eventually parted out, and the plants are gone, and then Rockefeller Center happened. And I that garden haunts me. I think about it all the time because I think it's such an important piece of New York City history, and I can't believe that it's gone.

SPEAKER_03 52:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:59

Um, and I would love to find some way to resurrect it somehow.

SPEAKER_03 53:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:06

Um, and I still I'm I'm still on that mission. I think it could happen one day. Maybe not at Rockefeller Center, although I don't know. Maybe there will be a way to integrate it somehow into the landscape there, but just some sort of tribute to that garden because it was just such an incredible piece of of this city, and it's kind of heartbreaking that it's gone.

SPEAKER_00 53:26

Well, Natalie, this was enlightening. Thank you again for being here today. Thank you for having me. If this conversation resonated with you, follow the show wherever you listen and find me on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Substack at Russi Hive. If someone came to mind for the hive, send guest suggestions to guests at ruseyhive.com. And if you just want to say hi, it's hello at rusihive.com. Original music and sonic identity for the Russi Hive by Ant Food. Until next time, let your life be a creative act.