Like so much of what we do at SFAI, propagation is a generative process. I never tire of starting plants from seed or of taking a three-inch cutting and rooting it to start a new plant. Much of what is growing in the meadow got its start on my balcony across the city. My Muni commute often included carrying some seedlings from home to school.

At the heart of propagation is the love of sharing plants, the sense that there’s a continuous life force that extends through them, the sheer wonder at how so much is contained in a tiny seed. Also, it’s a process that largely bypasses the cash register, and the exchange of plants happens among friends.

I find it heartening that teaching students to propagate their own plants offers them skills that can help them have access to healthy food, and gives them more agency in what they grow. Caring for plants at an early stage can offer students an extended practice that can be grounding and restorative.

Danette Bouzanquet, a student in my Meadow Mind Creative Writing class in fall 2019, made an astute observation about the small pea seedlings growing in a pot with four very tall bamboo poles. She suggested that we make a network of shorter sticks and she wove a trellis for them to set out toward the taller poles. I loved this insight and the conviction with which Danette proceeded to build the incremental trellis, and it made me think of that process in relation to pedagogy, and how I can offer students incremental supports that help them extend themselves toward what doesn’t feel quite within reach yet.

Plants call forth our empathy, give it a form. Danette’s insight as they noticed that the sweet peas might need more fine-tuned support also speaks to me of how empathy is an act of the imagination.

 GL 

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Secondary Connections