Zoë Davis
August 8, 2022
‘A flower from home’ encourages discovery and learning through seasonal flora. Detroit-based foraging repurposes ephemera from the home garden, neighborhood alleys, abandoned lots, and landscaping debris to floral arrangements with sustainable and local material. Through a ‘gardener first’ floral mentality, native seedpods, fruits, foraged invasives, and lichen covered branches challenge what we consider beautiful.
These images feature the Allium x proliferum, also known as ‘the walking onion.’ This plant grows bulblets instead of flowers at the top of its stem. The bulblets, heavier than the hollow stalk when mature, topples the stem towards the ground. Thus, replanting itself and aiding its ‘walk’ across the garden floor. A cross between the Welsh onion and the shallot, this perennial crop is pungent in odor, but edible to humans.
I’ve pursued an art practice and working education in horticulture, tending to public gardens in New York and estate gardens of the Detroit area. At its best, horticulture as a field works to restore greenspaces through increasing biodiversity, educating the public on sustainable practices, and providing a healthy environment for all to reflect and enjoy. Popularly declared as central to community wellness, a contradiction exists between the greenspace and the livelihood of its caretakers. To tend to these vital spaces, working conditions often pose serious health and safety risks for a woefully inadequate living wage. ‘A flower from home’ is a worker focused practice, advocating for safe, non-discriminatory, and sustainable horticulture jobs in the metro-Detroit area.