This project is the result of my long standing interest in documenting nature, manifested in a desire to document and record the plants that go into my mothers annual “hairy” garden salad. 

 

After a conversation had over the dinner table as to how much more nutritious this salad would be compared to a bag of supermarket salad, I decided to document the plants in the salad. My plant mapping, as seen on the next page, was inspired by a recent visit to the Oudolf Field at Hauser & Wirth, a large perennial meadow planted by Piet Oudolf. I then separated all of the species and documented them photographically.

 

Bruno Munari’s Più e Meno (plus and minus) drove the next development in this project. His interactive playing card game uses transparent tiles with a variety of designs to create a game where the user can create their own scene by layering the cards. I used this to create my own layered set of cards, each one with a different plant species on it. When all the cards are brought together, a circle is made, representing a whole.

 

The purpose of the cards is to help children understand the essence of biodiversity through building a whole from the elements provided.