The Dog Days of Summer call for a reprisal - please enjoy this week's revisit of our conversation with David Godshall!
David Godshall is a landscape architect, gardener and meta garden philosopher making his way with his young family and his Terremoto LA Landscape Architecture Design Studio team in Los Angeles.
David’s LA home garden and his perspective on adventurous gardening and design are featured in Under Western Skies, on which I collaborated with photographer Caitlin Atkinson. The Terremoto Team was featured as one of Elle Décor’s A List of designers 2021.
"garden making IS civilization making in miniature."
David Godshall, Terremoto LA
David joined me from his home and garden – accompanied by happy bird song – to share more on his garden world view.
You can follow along with David and Terremoto's work online at the Terremoto.LA, and on Instagram Terremoto_Landscape
Photos courtesy of Caitlin Atkinson, David Godshall & Terremoto, all rights reserved.
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JOIN US again next week, when we have a trifecta of Jennifers talking TestPlot an ongoing experiment in community based ecological restoration. Jenny Jones and Jen Toy share how TestPlot’s purpose is to celebrate the labor involved in land care and build a stronger land ethic in our community of Los Angeles, CA – with an eye far beyond. Test Plots are open to all. They invite us all to visit and get involved. Listen in!
Thinking out loud this week:
It is such a pleasure to revisit this conversation with David Godshall – and to know that we will be with another voice from Terremoto and another garden and gardening featured in Under Western Skies next week – Jenny Jones - about another endeavor she is active with Test Plots.
This is the exact time of year – with heat, and drought, and fire season in the west, that the gardens featured in Caitlin Atkinson and my book Under Western Skies really shine – they are gardens and gardeners working so beautifully and respectfully with the climate, the soil, the biodiversity of their places and still crafting the most enticing and soothing of spaces.
I am excited to be looking at the gardens of Under Western Skies from very specific lenses in two upcoming talks – the first on Thursday August 18th for the wonderful UK-based Garden Masterclass’s free Thursday chats on line and open to all – I will be walking attendees through the 5 gardens from the book that I would choose to have with me on a Desert Island – and why.I will be sharing a lot of Caitlin’s gorgeous and insightful photos and back stories from each of these gardens.
Then on Thursday September 15th I will be with the California Chapter of the APLD’s Sacramento District on-line looking deeply at the specifically California gardens in Under Western Skies – love interesting and ecologically contributing California gardens with the strength of design? You will love this deep dive.
*Click the Green Live links to register or for more information about either of these talks.
An update on upcoming interviews, I know that several of you have reached out to me with suggestions for interview guests. I ALWAYS appreciate these and so if you. Don’t hear that guest immediately – know that my queue is long and there is time. Don’t give up hope! In the last year several of you have suggested the writer and thinker Maria Popova as an excellent interview possibility. And I wanted to share this experience with you. I was able to reach out to her, as I to enjoy her work deeply, and I’m expanded by it each time I have the opportunity to sink into it and let it sink into me.
After several back and forths, Maria very kindly and graciously declined my offer of an interview due to philosophical reasons of her own – reasons of privacy and priority and the importance of maintaining her own focus.
I have such admiration for this clarity and while I am disappointed to not interview her and to not fulfill your hopes of hearing these two voices you enjoy, mine and Maria’s, together in conversation, I applaud her. If you are not familiar with her work formerly known as brain pickings and now known as the Marginalian, check her out. I think you will particularly enjoy those moments when her work glosses the pleasures and powers of the garden, the gardener, and gardening as important philosophical, existential, environmental, and sociological signifiers and spaces in our world today. Look her up and let me know what you think.
Her considered response to me made me think more deeply about my own place, and my own Voice and focus and the importance of protecting it.
Many of you will have noticed that I have not written an official of A View From Here newsletter in some time. I have also significantly dialed back my activity on Instagram – sticking to 2 or 3 posts per week – liking and commenting on the feeds I love and learn from and otherwise not doom-scrolling. I have been a little confused myself about this seemin contraction on my part. And Maria’s response to me clarified and reminds me of this truth: we cannot speak to all the people in all of the places in all the ways all the time.
The most important place and space in which I want my voice to be the strongest and heard with the greatest conviction and care is right here in these podcast breaks with you all, and in person speaking with groups across the country. That is where I choose focus and cleave to my mission of engaging empowering encouraging and I hope energizing gardeners around the world to embrace their fullest agency and joy for growing the change they want to see in this world.
Our gardens can and should be durable bridges and ongoing invitations, they can and must provide refuge for ourselves our families the biodiversity of our spaces. When you want or need to hear from me, you all know this is where you will find me and my voice every week. Keep growing
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