The Peaceful Flowers

The Peaceful Flowers

20'-0" x 20'-0"

Orange Day Lilies

London, Ontario

Summer 2015

Jim Kogelheide

This story begins a little over 16 years ago!  Way back in 1999, Joanne and I were living in Neepawa, Manitoba while I was pursuing my ambitious cross Canada art project entitled ‘Canada: Glorious To Be’.  During our stay in this community, I came across a newspaper article that showed how a small number of artists and farmers were working together to create artworks using food crops as their medium.  In one of the photos we saw a picture of a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk.  This image was created using corn, soya beans and canola plants.  I was very impressed and this inspiration has stayed with me for all of these years!

In the spring of 2010, I was doing a lot of personal garden planting using tall and slender day lilies and I found that I had a lot left over after my job was finished.  I was thinking about the Manitoba farms and suddenly I knew what to do with all of my lilies!!!

During this time, I was writing a lot of blog stories and this new inspiration for creating images using flowers became known as ‘Guerrilla Gardening 101’

 

I used my blog to share my ideas as well as the methods that I was using to create peace symbols in surrounding London ditches.  Some of my friends call it ‘Ditch Art’!

I shared my adventures with some other peacefully minding friends and soon another ditch art creation was being realized!

As you can see, we all worked very hard to create this art and many stories, jokes and songs were shared during this time.  We all had a lot of fun!

In fact – we had so much fun that we decided to create a third peace symbol using these orange day lilies! 

Not as many people came out for this adventure… but we had a great time, anyway!

Here, I’ve highlighted the shape that we created so you can see more easily, the shape of the peace symbol.  As you can see, this one was rather large!

I knew that each of these three artworks would need future tending to, as surrounding grasses would try to dominate over our flowers, so – for the first summer – I visited each location several times.

I found that the first peace symbol was doing quite well and I was very happy!  When I visited the second group of flowers I came to realize that the clay soil that was in this area wasn’t agreeing with the flowers and that many had died.  When I visited the third area, I couldn’t find a single day lily – the surrounding grasses and plants had completely dominated our flowers and there was no sign that we had ever been in the area.

Because of these reasons, I never returned to the last two planting areas, but the original location has seen me revisiting it several times each year.

Each spring, I return to the first location to add more flowers.  I continue to add the orange day lilies but there have been two other times when I’ve also added a shorter, yellow day lily to make this art creation more colourful.

Just before or shortly after the lilies begin to bloom – which is usually nearing the end of June – I visit this location, again, to cut away all the competing grasses.  Now, where did my peace symbol get to?

Ahhhhh yes!  I can see many flowers… but I can’t seem to see the shape of the peace symbol.  I’ll have to do something about that!

This year, because of my busy work schedule, I had only one afternoon to dedicate to this garden art project… and it poured rain!  When I first arrived, only a few raindrops were falling.  About 20 minutes later, a steady drizzle was coming down.  OK – I was about to get really damp… but that didn’t stop me!  A few minutes later, the skies opened up and a torrential downpour spilled over the entire city.  I could barely see what I was doing with my knives and machetes because the rain was getting into my eyes and blurring my vision!

After 2 ½ hours I was soaked to the bone… but I had finished the job!  I’m very dedicated to my art, my flowers and peaceful things!!!!

I cut down the surrounding grasses for two reasons.  Obviously, with the competing grasses cut down, my peace symbol made of day lilies is more visible.  I don’t just toss the cut down grasses away… I use them.  I place them around the outside of the peace symbol and inside it, laying them flat.  This should slow down future growth of these grasses – ever so slightly – and when these grasses dry, they turn brown and this creates more contrast in surrounding colours making the peace symbol even more visible.

This location sees many thousands of London commuters each day and it is always my hope that a few of them will see my art creation and feel inspired to love Nature… just as I hope that you are now inspired by reading this story. 

Jim Kogelheide

2015