Welcome to the Seed of Life Garden
A Self-Sufficiency Start-up Garden
which grows into an abundance garden
by its very nature.

The New Seed of Life Garden Project Manual © Is Available!
The Seed of Life Garden is now in Vacaville State Prison - learn more...

Kathy Irving of Nevada City -
an Artist Questionnaire
by Pam Jung, Editor
The Prospector
April 17, 2008
The Union Newspaper

Editor's note: Creative expression comes in many forms. Kathy Irving is an artist in plants and landscape design. She is shown here with her drawing of the Full Circle Demonstration Garden that the Nevada County Recycling Department created to teach our community about composting, erosion control and irrigation. Inmates of Wayne Brown Correction Facility built and now maintain the garden in Nevada City. Irving is also a poet.

Career: Gardening and landscape design of Process Gardens
 
Describe your art, briefly: Drawings of gardens, parks and community living arrangements that are intended to address concerns such as affordable and emergency housing. Designs include the "Seed of Life" Garden, the Heal Yourself From Your Broken Heart Garden and the Full Circle composting.
 
How long doing it? I have been designing since 2000.
 
Why do you do it? The world evokes it, shapes it, seems to need it, making the issue of who does it kind of tricky.
 
What do you hope to accomplish? The quality of life that people experience increases as a result of these designs.
 
Does your art convey a message? Yes, solutions are all around us. Nature has already worked out most of the design glitches by going around the sun for millions of years, and the patterns found in nature are the results. We need only apply the pattern most appropriate for addressing the current problem, and we can avoid the long, arduous process of reinventing the wheel.

Where do you want to be with this in the future? As a little wrinkled old woman on a porch with lemonade in hand, and feeling that out there somewhere, there are happy children with full bellies that play in "Seed of Life" gardens.
 
Any special training required? Care about every set of eyeballs and never give up.
 
Favorite part? Working together towards friendly, achievable, creative goals.
 
Least favorite part? Going to bureaucratic meetings (which inevitably search for reasons to postpone action until everyone is less busy) and talking on the phone (because I find it hard to enjoy the conversation without the person there).
 
Time it takes? As Deena Metzger says, "There is only time to work slowly. There is no time not to love."
 
Is it hard to do? First, the world breaks your heart, then inspiration strikes or one asks for it and it shows. Then the inspiration burns so hot that one can see nothing but the hope that is whiffed in the breeze that blows back from our future, and one colors like a mad woman into the night regardless of the desire for common treasures like sexual love and money.
 
Other comments: Come see the Garden Solutions Art Show at Coffee Town in Grass Valley at 134 S. Auburn Street for the entire month of April. I will be speaking there at 5 p.m. on Monday, April 21st, 2008. Free handouts of the "Seed of Life" Garden Design are available.