Seeds is site-specific book of papers made from, and embedded with, seeds and plants gathered from a specific plot of restoration prairie. The papers were handmade, with cotton as well as the plants and grasses, during a residency at The Printing Museum, Houston. The linen fabric and thread used for the cover and binding were dyed with goldenrod from the site.

This book speaks of the ongoing regeneration of one small section of grassland, and of what similar changes could mean for the planet in mitigating climate change and storing carbon. Over ten years, I’ve watched this pocket prairie regrow from a few inches of drought-suppressed, stubby grass, to swaying waves of stems six feet tall. Along the way I have been haunted by questions around my role in this place – how much intervention is needed, and how much is too much?

During 2020 I spent more time than ever on this small plot of land. I gathered and pressed plants in a casual fashion, and eased into the quiet of the meadow: the birdsong, the rustling of the grasses. I nearly tripped over a sunbathing snake. I took pinhole photographs trying to convey this experience, looking up and through the grasses.

By September the grasses were as tall as I am and my experience of them became more visceral, they had so much more physical presence. Suddenly grass was something I walked among not over. One, whose height and color I admired, turned out to be an invasive species. Clearly, regrowing the savanna is not as simple as ‘not cutting’. What should I take away and what should I add? This question assumes there is a right answer, when that binary of right/wrong is a human way of seeing. The neighboring plants, the weather, the soil will decide what flourishes.

Now that I’m paying attention, now that I see I have invasives to remove and seeds to add, I’m impatient. Impatient to begin, and impatient to finish. Only there is no moment of completion, only the potential for an uneasy, unstable balance between functioning savanna ecosystem and the now-present, unavoidable invasive. Where is the line between ‘gardening’ and ‘rewilding’? I may be tending this non-garden forever.