Seeding the Future (This Is Not a Metaphor): Creative Acts of Public Gardening with Yarrow Collective

In a world beset by climate crisis, how can artists create participatory performance work that moves audiences from distant spectators to become active agents with an awareness of the role they play in a larger ecosystem? On lək̓ʷəŋən territory, colonially known as Victoria, BC, Yarrow Collective creates multidisciplinary installations that invite communities into creative acts of public gardening. In this case study, co-creators Sammie Gough and Laurel Green trace the development of their new work for Pacific Opera Victoria’s Voices in Nature that toured city parks in the summer of 2022. Drawing from a wide variety of influences, they envision the transformative potential of weaving together their artistic practices in an ongoing collaborative relationship with the life cycles of Indigenous plants and pollinators. They confront their own settler-inherited, extractive notions of what a garden should be and explore what becomes possible when gardening is shifted from expert labour to a shared creative act. Yarrow Collective’s installations become meeting places for intergenerational temporary communities that offer ecological resources, hold space for uncomfortable truths, and yield opportunities for ongoing stewardship as both collective journeys and site-responsive living artworks.