Puutarha — wayfinding through shared experiencing with plants
The relationships between plants are complex. They share space, shade, food and water, and thrive in conditions they have evolved with over millennia. Their growth and continuity is dependent on coexistence. When we attend to plants, they tell us of their preferences, needs and avoidances. Much of this knowledge has been kept in the home — passed between growers, seasons and communities. Only recently has it been acknowledged by the scientific community.
As part of our urban landscape, gardening happens in small plots, garden boxes and window pots. We are highly dependent on plants for improved air quality, healthier environments and fresh produce, yet we continue to farm them far away while our cities become increasingly dense with concrete. Learning to grow plants together in small spaces, locally, is both a practical necessity and a quiet form of resistance.
This session invites participants to collaborate, explore and plan a small garden. Here we will figure out how to group plants together through relationship, mutual benefit and survival strategies. A collection of digital tools, built from companion planting knowledge, provides a space for this exploration. We also attend to the tools themselves: how can the extractive technologies we use be turned towards closer relation with the land we are situated in?
Knowing our interdependence with plants is something we can bring to other aspects of our lives.
- What can we work towards to bring about spaces where plants thrive among us?
- What ways can posthumanism promote local growing of edible plants?
- How can plants bring thoughtfulness and slowness to our fast-paced urban centres?
- Can shared experiences with plants create openings for sharing language, making time to listen to each other while attending to something that grows?
Janna approaches posthumanism as a boundary object: a space to be, explore and notice. Working across technology, design and UX, their practice is slow, recursive and often deliberately incomplete. Puutarha is a long-running project exploring companion planting through digital tools built for curiosity rather than conclusion: a collection that has grown gradually, the way gardens do. Their work asks how systems of design shape access, and what becomes possible when we resist the pressure to finish.