Ep.102 Nature Data and Digital Botany with Sophi Gardner

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Hello, Hello, everyone! Welcome back to another episode of reconnect with plant wisdom. It’s me, Tigrilla Gardenia.

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Today’s guest is somebody that I think she and I have been talking about being on the podcast for months. And I’m kind of glad it didn’t happen exactly when we started, because she has come such a long way since then, and there is so much to talk about

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in the work that she’s doing, because she really is a pioneer in giving plants a digital space in which to share and connect. And there’s just so much here. So I’m not even going to spend too much time introducing this episode. I just want to jump straight into this conversation. This is Episode 102,

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nature data and digital botany with Sophie Gardner, enjoy

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welcome to reconnect with plant wisdom. I’m your host, Tigrilla Gardenia. Nature inspired mentor, certified life coach and the founder of the naturally conscious community. For over a decade. I’ve been known as a world ambassador for plant advocacy, working closely with plants to share their practical wisdom, to help you consciously embody the elements of life.

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Your evolution. In this podcast I delve into ancient and modern knowledge, from biology to spirituality, about the wondrous ways of plants. Together, we’ll explore how ecosystem thinking helps you overcome limiting beliefs, understand the true nature of relationships and live an authentic, impactful life.

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All right, Steffi, this.

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how long have we been trying to do this. It’s been months. So I have a feeling this is going to be so much fun, because we’re just going to be laughing the entire way as we go through this interview. And so I am so excited to actually get into this. We have known each other now

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for a while. I’m trying to remember how we met. I think I think I remember you before. You remember me because I saw you speak at a conference. It was either plant consciousness or nature consciousness. It’s plant consciousness.

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Yeah, near Regents Park in London. And I saw you speak. And this is before I kind of started my official journey with the planter, and I just was like blown away by what you said. And usually I’m quite shy, but I think I actually approached you.

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That was such a great, you know, that I still stay in touch with lots of people that I met there. I’ve had clients come out of it. Collaborators. It was such a great conference, and I’m kind of sad that they stopped doing them. But before we go down that route right, because there’s so much to say about you and your journey, because your journey has, like, taken you through a few different paths. As you got deeper and deeper into this plan.

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can you just tell everybody who is Sophie Gardner?

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Hello, so I am an artist. I’m working with Earth energies and plants

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and nature data alongside other mediums. I connect plants to circuits, to read their electropotentials

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and get a kind of analog signal, and then turn that into a digital signal which informs visuals as well as audio. So I’m kind of working with different kind of visual code. But I kind of generated some code that allows plants to paint pictures and doodles.

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So they kind of draw in 3 dimensional space. You kind of get a sense of kind of the data in in 3D. Kind of a lot of it looks 2D, but it’s yeah kind of an expression of communication and reaching to understand more about the

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data from plants. I love it. And and here’s the thing that I find that’s fascinating, because, like you said, we met in London and right before plant communication, I mean plant consciousness, which was that conference you were talking about? I had done the Chelsea Flower Show with a different artist who was his name, Ollie Oliver.

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It’ll come to me as I go. I don’t know why. I just blanked on his name totally. And he who was also somebody who was a visual artist, and you know, had worked with the music of plants devices to create a combination of soundscape as well as a certain amount of video like he had this really interesting interpretation that he was doing with Video. And I loved when I started to see you develop. I’ve kept in touch with you over the years, too. Every once in a while pinging you because I really just love

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how you’ve taken this in a very unique perspective. I find it really fascinating that where the audio portion, no offense to audio. I’m an audio engineer, so I’m not digging, dissing, or digging, or saying anything bad about audio. But what I have found is that those of you that do

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visual also aspects, in addition to the audio, have really taken this connection to plants in a whole different direction, like where many of the audio people I feel are kind of stuck in human audio. It’s very rare that I find people that are working with the plants using kind of completely different. I think I only know of one artist, and he also is a visual as well as an audio artist.

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But audioscapes seem to get stuck into a human paradigm. And yet, Video, I have found for most of the people that are doing things like you, which is a very small subset. To be honest, I found very few of you. You’re really taking things in a super, unique way. And so I’m so curious as to how does it develop for you like? Who informs? Whom is it the plant telling you?

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Is it you trying to train the plant like? Where does it all come from. And how does it go?

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Okay, I definitely don’t train the pug

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with cats, you know, hiding cats like they’re doing their thing. They’re just gonna do their thing. The plants are definitely informing me. And it’s like lots of like, I’m picking around with code, right? It’s not exactly video. It’s a live, coded kind of visual work. So what what I noticed is, you know, if I gave them like a 2D space to work with.

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you know, I’d get sort of the movement I give them. Sorry. Let me rewind so. I think something that I’ve been playing with that I’ve not seen before. I don’t know if I’ve seen it before, anywhere, actually. But you know there’s bound to be lots of artists working in different ways, but it’s giving the plants as a 3 dimensional curvature through time and space.

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So the the reason I did that is, you’re literally talking about nature. Right? We are nature, and the universe is nature and the plants in nature. It’s all nature. So everything’s moving in time, you know, kind of.

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And and everything’s moving in curves and spirals. So the code itself started off kind of almost like flat, like, given a flat line trajectory, like just dump some colorful elements in here, I should say, actually so the the plants are informing where elements, visual elements, like circles or lines, or pixels, or

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arcs, or triangles, or, you know, square or anything like that. The color of them, the size of them, the placement on the screen, and how many come out and are seen so, and and which direction and what speed. So there’s really like power of the plant to doodle in in the programs. But when I when I started back it was just like.

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Let a dot come out, you know, or let the color change, or, you know, like, what? Where’s this going? So I guess

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I guess the evolution of letting them. Doodle did go through quite a human lens in the sense of, we understand, you know, written language and visual language in terms of

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these placements through space, across a canvas, and so I wanted to allow the plants communication to emanate through a medium we could understand to inform us, and I guess, like one of the most interesting things I’ve seen is like as I’ve

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spent time with them. And you know each choice of like change that that little bit of code to allow for a bit more space to create bigger shapes, smaller, you know, whatever. As I’ve kind of

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gone through the process I kind of. I guess I feel super in sync with them, and it’s gotten

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as they draw. They kind of draw themselves a little bit like they’re slightly. They’re very abstract, but it’s like abstract self-portraiture, and I don’t think of that in the sense of like. Oh.

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you know, I’m a human. I’m going to draw a picture of myself. I feel like it’s an echo of themselves, like they’re emanating like it’s hellonic or something. It’s like inside. Their energy is them. They are more of themself, and it’s abstract, but it’s beautiful.

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I can imagine. I I mean everything I’ve seen. I I think it’s it’s that part of

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getting outside of what our expectations are. You know it’s like it’s when you know we see this a little bit with human artists.

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There are those that when they do a self portrait. It’s it’s a scramble of color, it’s shapes. It’s not a let me draw my face, and here’s what my mouth looks like. And yet you look at this, and you’re like I get it. I see you in that. And I feel like that’s somewhat like you said what you’re doing, which is giving the plant an opportunity to say.

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hear, feel, and see me when I’ll give you an example. When I there’s a course, a class that I teach here in Dom and her called communication with the plant. No, yeah. Communication with the plant world and communication with the plant world has one segment of it. That is where we I blindfold everybody.

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and I bring in different plants, and I have you sit with the plant, for you know, a few minutes, and then I bring the plant back out, and you sit. And you take notes, and we do this with with 3 different plants.

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And it’s fascinating to see the similarities between the group of what they write, because they don’t talk as they write, so they they experience a plant and then write, and then, like, you know. Some will say the plant has to be big with like, I see this color, or I feel these and these things. And it’s amazing to see the similarities between the people, but that oftentimes do not reflect the physicality of the plant

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like they’ll see a plant that’s really big, and it’ll be this teeny, tiny little physical plants. And I think that that’s in some ways what you’re capturing with this work you’re giving the plant the opportunity to show their essence

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without being to a certain extent constrained by sure, they’re using elements of visuality that we understand circles and lines, and maybe spirals and shapes and stuff like that, but not necessarily in the way that we would expect them to come together. And so that’s what gives plants that space. Do you find that that as you’ve been going, they’ve been asking for more space.

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Oh, that’s a good question, I mean, I guess

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I guess it’s when you’re you know, when you’re like I don’t know. Working as a team, it kind of all blends into one. So it’s like I get super excited about something I’m like.

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and I watch the data jump. And I’m like, is that me? Is that them on me is that me? And then, of course, there’s like interactions. And there’s touch. I do. You know, some of the paintings? I touch the plants while they’re painting them and and other times they’re just painting, and I’ll leave them alone in a room to paint on their own, you know, like, have a bit. There’s not many plants in my house that are on their own. I’ve got my studio in my house.

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so you know, got those plants everywhere. So you know, are they informing each other? And and actually that brings me on to like some of the more interesting stuff

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that’s happened over the course. It’s like.

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for instance. So with the audio side of it, I’ve done some synth work. And I’ve kind of like I’m working in a slightly different system because I don’t have medieval plugged in through all the electronics. And you know, it’s not working. It’s literally, I’m literally getting a stream of data. And so I’m then channeling that data into a coded environments. So the data can play so the plant can play.

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So one of the things I tried was programming different bird sounds. So I did some field recordings, and I found some stock sounds from birds, and this kind of thing, and I gave them an array of different bird sounds to work with different plants.

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And and I found. What’s quite interesting is like, have you ever noticed in when you’re out in nature? How like suddenly the birds make a big noise? You know there’s a big cacophony there’s like a whole hoo-ha going on, and who knows what? Set that off?

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And then it’ll go on for a bit a bit wild, and then it will shush, shush up again. And it was. And you’re like, Okay, they’re birds hanging out, you know, like, be a bird that’s cool. And what I noticed is giving the but the bird song to the plants inside of a you know a house.

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and they they they do that, too. So there’s like these cacophonies. So the data keeps going. It’s not like the data stopped. But somehow there are these cacophonies of sound. And then a shushing

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in in a really similar way. And it will kind of undulate throughout the day. And I’m like.

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Okay, then, you know, and sometimes they don’t shut up, and sometimes it’s all chill. But when I go back and read the data, I’m like, well, the plant was doing stuff. It just wasn’t doing it there. So it’s like, do they know? How did they know, or how did that, you know? How does that come to pass?

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So it’s yeah kind of. And I guess so. I know that there’s some research that shows that Birdsong stimulates the stoma. I mean, they’re quite stoma to take a while to open right, and you know, close, that’s the like. The porous mouths on their leaves that help them feed on light and

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and such like. So you know, you hear the bird song in the morning before the sun’s come, and it’s like, well, maybe that’s just like stimulating them to like. Wake up and drink, you know. Drink that sunlight as it comes, and it’s like.

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you know that somehow the birds belong with the tree and the tree belongs with the birds, and somehow, you know, I mean, I think in terms of coding a bit, because I’m coder somehow. That’s coded into the plants, you know. That’s and that’s how they can produce this

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cacophony effect, and and that somehow that must be like drinking a cup of tea for them. You know. It’s like having a cup of tea like, Get down with your bird song

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and I and I think that’s probably the things that you’re starting to capture right as you do this.

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These are those.

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How do I say this? The connection points the the interactivity between, you know different species that we.

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on one hand, don’t know how to isolate and understand. And, on the other hand, nor do we want to. But we’d love to be able to connect in to that, to to kind of see? Okay.

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also, what does it reveal about that relationship? But also, what does it reveal about my own relationship like, am I supposed to be all?

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I don’t know the equivalent of that cacophony which might not be vocal, but it might be a different kind of movement that is more important for me that I’m not doing, because I’ve kind of gotten out of my natural rhythm, and that by hearing this it’s sort of

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comes to you and comes back into it, because even we, as human beings, when we listen to those I mean at least I do. I know this when I moved into an environment where I could hear, like you said that that cacophony of sound, and that that birdsong those moments when everything happens, I’ve noticed that my body reacts differently and you tap into that. I’m so curious as to if there are other types of

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for lack of a better term, I’ll say relationships or behavioral patterns that you are starting to see especially, and I’m going to preface this by asking kind of a secondary question inside of this, which is, you know, as a Coder. Of course it’s very

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easy, and probably tempting to want to control the sound like what it is that the plants create. We hear this with some devices of of plant music that maybe control it, to give it a much more human sound as opposed to something that feels really as a real reflection. And I talked to an artist many years ago, who had told me that one of the difficulties he had was the fact that

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he was trying to get closer and closer to a true representation of what the plants were experiencing.

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while at the same time not making it something that sounded like screeches. And then I just wanted to turn it off as fast as possible. So I guess my question is, do you find yourself like, How have you navigated, and do you find that over time it’s become easier or harder, or it’s still something. That’s a big question mark to

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be the coder. So the co-creator, but at the same time co-create more freedom for the plants to express themselves through the work that you’re doing. Yeah. Yeah. So I think I heard those questions along different tangents. So forgive me if I jump around. Please jump every direction you want. Exactly. So it’s like, okay. So one thing I want to talk about just while it’s in my mind is

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quite early doors when I was like when I did my 1st exhibition. Actually I’ve noticed it just before then, and it actually came up during the exhibition. So it was a bit like what or in the setup, I think. But I noticed that 2 different plants wired to do different circuits, wired 2 different computers.

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etc. Etc. But they just have 2, 1 leaf each, 2 leaves touching.

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So I noticed their data go in and out of sync.

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and by sink I mean, like literally, the numbers were like kind of reading, more or less the same, for I don’t know a minute. And and you’d think, Okay, that’s an electrical phenomena. That’s some kind of like interaction of this, you know. What is that? What’s this phenomenon? But then it would naturally go out of sync. And it’s like, Okay, nothing else has moved. And then it would come back

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in sync again. And the data is a representation of their breathing, basically the rate like the rate of their being. And the I don’t know, like, well, it’s essentially a tiny signal is being sent to them.

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And and then what bounces back is like, how much potential for electrical flow is going on. And it’s a tiny, tiny amount of energy. So you know, it’s like.

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basically, how does that happen? You know that kind of the plants are going in and out of sync in these sort of human made systems, you know, because if you take the the pads of the plant, you don’t get anything. You know, there’s this is a big chain of zeros. So when you’re seeing data.

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when the pads are attached to the plant, that’s the plant. And yeah, sure touching can affect. And I’m sure there’s like different things that can affect the environment affects them definitely. But

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yeah, so that was one other really interesting phenomena that I don’t like. I don’t have any answers. I’m learning.

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I’ve often got imposter syndrome, you know. I’m not like the best coder. I’m just like, what am I doing? I don’t know. I just feel like this huge gravitational pull and a sense of weird urgency, and it kind of comes in floods. And then, you know, and then I crash, and I don’t do it for a while, and then it comes back again, you know, kind of artist style. And and yeah, so this is the. These are the things that I want to

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kind of keep going with and investigate more. And you know, in terms of like, did I do that? It’s like, well, yeah, I mean, like, I kind of, you know, the circuits and the computer. And yeah, like, you know, I sort of stuck them into the system right? But what’s that, you know? Like, the question is, what’s the extra thing going on that can’t so easily be explained. If if they stayed in sync.

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for, like, you know, a given amount of time, and then only moved out of sync. When you part of that, you know, like it could be an electrical phenomena, or and maybe I’m wrong. Maybe someone can explain it to me. But for me, having worked with the plants for so long in different ways. It’s like, no, there’s a whole. There’s a whole load of interaction, and there’s a whole load of in syncing and

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and connectivity that happens above ground, because these are potted plants that aren’t sharing roots, I mean, you know, probably should do a bit more work with the root sharing phenomena. But yeah, so and so to come back to your question about the code.

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So obviously, you know, any environment you build has it is in is encased right? It’s like a screen is only as big as the screen is.

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So when I code, I kind of inform the code like, don’t you know? Like, use that data. But please don’t try not to leave the screen right? So like, that was one of the natural phenomenas was, I don’t want the data to, just.

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you know I don’t want the information from the plants to just fall off the screen and disappear. I want to see it. So that’s kind of what got me going on like, Okay, we’re going to have to, you know. Send this thing in an orbit. And then suddenly I felt really comfortable with that, because I’m like the whole universe is in, or you know, everything’s like spiraling and orbiting. And you know this is this is where we are so, and and then, in terms of like.

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you know, like, how does the plan inform the visual content and any audio content? It’s like, well, I have to.

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I have to kind of grab that data and go. Okay, this is the beginning is not. The beginning is no data, and the top end is like more or less, the furthest it can possibly go. Given the system. And then it’s what happens in between.

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So if you give the same code to a peace lily, or then to a monstera plant, or or to a philodendron, or you know palm, or you know whichever plant you give it. If you give it that same code. You see these different

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kind of flow forms coming out. So it’s like, well, yeah, as a coder, I’ve been like, Okay, you can’t bounce off screen too much. Otherwise we can’t see you, you know, and and there’s only so much color spectrum that a human can see. You know, we know. We know that there’s like a

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huge, rich electromagne, you know, electro magnetic spectrum. But we you know, we we have a certain kind of color wheel.

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So it’s like, Okay, well, I’m going to have to say, you know, the beginning of the color and the end of the cut, you know, like I’m going to have to hold it in somehow and embody. So like, Yeah, I’m controlling some things and some some sketches. I call them like, some things are very contained, like only draw in black and white, and only go a 3rd across the pain. And I want to see this. I want you to write me an

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alphabet, you know. So it’s like, very, you know, like very strict, you know. And and then some, it’s just like, Okay, go wild. Use everything, go anywhere and just see what comes out. So I think for me like

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it. It’s it’s kind of like a space where you know. Yeah.

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I’ve got some control, a lot of control. No, whatever it’s like, let’s see what the different plants do with that. And then let’s talk about it rather than like.

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you know, sort of trying to decide that there has to be a rule about how much it can or can’t. And I think you know, the difference is.

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can you see that plant generating something meaningful

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across time in and of itself by itself? And then what happens when we interact? And it’s funny, like the the journey along. You know, people are like, I want it to react. I want it to be like a toy. I want it to like. I want to just touch the plant, and it does. There’s a cool art, and that’s it, you know. And I’m like, Wow, you know, there’s a real hunger

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to thingify and make toy out of nature, and I don’t see that as a bad thing, I think that that’s innately natural, like, we’re playful kind of creatures, but I think there’s there’s like

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2 different spaces, and they’re both valuable. And but for me, the the value in evolving our sense of our sense of sensing actually, and our sense of knowing and seeing with other life forms for me that has

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bigger value, because it’s that deep, deep mystic. It’s the deep.

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deep, known unknown. I know I’m part of this natural world, and I know I can feel things I don’t have words for

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and like, I know, I can feel my plants around me being alive. I just want to be able to like, extend that and explore that. And I want. I want there to be to build a bridge, you know. Okay, but we have to take a very, very quick break to share with you one of our eco-conscious business partners

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for over a decade I’ve had the profound joy of working with the music of the plants. A musical instrument made just for plants. This very music is what sparked my own plant, reawakening, guiding me to reconnect with Nature in an entirely new way.

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Imagine listening to the harmonious melodies of your plant companions, and feeling their wisdom and presence through the language of music.

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It’s an experience that has transformed my life and the lives of so many other people.

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If you’re curious about the hidden songs of plants and want to connect to your plant friends in a completely new way, I invite you to discover more at tigrillagardenia.com/musicoftheplants. It’s in the show notes. Plant music is great for healing, sharing, and personal connection. Let’s continue our journey of personal evolution and plant consciousness, together with the songs of plants.

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No, and this is great, because I think you’ve touched on a few elements that are hard. 1st of all, one part that you said that I hear it all the time right? When I work with the music of the plants. And I, you know, have these demonstrations, and everybody’s like, does the plant react? And my answer is always Yes, and I realize, as time has gone on that that yes.

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to a certain extent needs to be qualified, which is

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yes, there is a reaction. But please don’t always think that the reaction is 1st of all, right away, like you just said, but also that the reaction is in the music itself, in the sense that

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just an episode a few episodes back episode, I believe 98 of the podcast, was all about receiving plant music. I mean receiving plant communication in other ways. I was trying to show. You know, memory and all these other aspects of how we receive.

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And I think the hard part when we’re trying to do things. Is that, like you said, it becomes this novelty where it’s okay. I’m going to touch the plant, and I want to see the visuals change in a certain way, but in reality the plant might be responding to you in something completely different, something that’s even outside of the scope

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of what you’re doing. It’s not a. Because I touch the plant all of a sudden I’m going to get an electrical response. I might be getting a response. That’s a memory. I might be getting some kind of, you know, volatile, organic, chemical that gets released. I might be getting all these other things, and I think that for now.

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because of our own constraints and our own kind of

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noviceness, like we’re. We’re young at this right? So we’re totally young at this. And so so we’re giving you like one parameter. So, for example, you know, from from our perspective, we started with this whole electrical signals, and now electrical signals have moved off to be sound on one side, or something audible, let me put audible on one side and another side is some visual piece of it.

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but and just that already is starting to show us more depth when you combine like you said with the bird sound, and with others, when you combine these 2 together, you all of a sudden have a richness.

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But now and and imagine there was a device I don’t know. If you remember this, I think of the device was called Florence many years ago, that was, had like a bubble around the plant, and this one collected organic chemicals like organic.

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all these different organic compounds, and turn that into speech. So it was this really cool the woman. Gosh! I can’t believe I remember her name, but I’m almost positive that the program the actual device was called Florence, and used the Twitter vocabulary, like the vocabulary that they were pulling from was a a language model that was coming from twitter. And basically, the plant would respond

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through these chemicals. And so can you imagine already bringing those 3 together? Right? So I have this visual representation, this audible sound based one. And then these written words, which are really human, like, because once you convert into. And so I think we’re going to continue to have these different layers that allow us. Because most of us are not entering into relationship with plant in a completely telepathic way.

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We’re using what we can, which is technology to help us kind of, you know, give the plant more space. And and I think this is totally fair exactly to mediate that relationship. And so I guess I’m going to ask you a question that takes you backwards. But then to spring you forward.

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So my backwards question to you is, when you 1st started like, 1st of all, what was the inspiration that got you started with this? And what did you think you were going to accomplish even just at a very cursory level. What did you think you were actually doing like when you 1st started to work with plants in this way? And then I’ll ask you the spring forward question.

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I it’s funny. Up until recently, you know, when people like, where did you get the idea from, you know, like, Oh, someone else’s idea. I’m like, it’s like an amalgam. Right? There’s all these different people doing all these different things and researchers and scientists and artists. And you know it’s amazing. And I so I used to answer, Oh, I read the secret life of plants.

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you know, 20 years ago, and was like, gosh, you know, like this is, this is special. This is important. And you know that that’s generally my answer. But recently I’ve been having this floods of memories as a really young child.

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and like like hearing people call, you know, plants like dandelions, weeds.

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And then I would go to them, and I would whisper, and I’d be like, I’m so sorry. I know that you’re special. I know that you’re that’s fantastic. I keep having these memories. I’m like, oh, you know, I just have those like little in an epiphany moments. So

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I guess I’m informed by a sensitivity, a plant sensitivity from a young age.

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and you know I kind of gone through different phases of heightened sensitivity, and you know, more like Mundania. But I definitely had my phase, and I remember having this phase, and I think it was late teenage years or early twenties, where I felt magnetized to not just hold trees. I could go hug them. I was always stroking plants and flowers, always wanted to touch and be with them.

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and have since learned that gentle touch with plants stimulates their growth in general, you know you don’t want to be too rough or too like intense kind of come with a gentle energy. But yeah, so I had that sense that they wanted to be touched, and I’d you know, hug a tree, or whatever. But I went through this phase of listening to roots.

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so I’d get right down there in the dirt, and I’d like have my head right, you know, with a tree, and I just, and I just lay there and I’d be like listening. It’s it’s not the same as listening with your ears. It is, but it’s like feeling, listening, listening, feeling. And I just get this like sense of almost like the world turning upside down, but not like I’d be very grounded. But it was like

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the feeling that up is down and down is up, and you know how like, when you see the branches and the root like the roots, you know, it’s kind of like it’s not exactly mirror, but there’s like this.

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this mirror image between. You know how a lot of the root forms grow, and it was like I could feel the water moving through the roots. And and I you know I wasn’t high. I was just maybe occasionally I was.

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I was just like I was feeling I was feeling where I was, you know, in the forest or in nature. So I guess

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when people say, Where did the work start? It kind of started there and then it kind of started with different inspirational speakers like yourself and listening. And then I was like listening to different plant music. And I’m like, where are the visuals like what’s going on.

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And and it was like I joined an Ma just before the pandemic, and that was my. I think that was my 1st project, and it was like, I just my soul was just like I’m doing this. And they were like, do that as an end project. I’m like, no, I’m doing this now, you know, like Bam.

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I’ve got to do this. So I found some open source circuit models from Sam Cusimano

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and kind of stripped them back to call the media strips and have since played around and things. And and yeah, just like, put some circuits together with some help from teachers and friends and family and and yeah, just kind of

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kind of yeah, just started tuning in. So I guess I got I got to this route from, you know, lots of different sources of nourishment and nutrients from my environment. And you know it’s not. It’s nonlinear. It’s I didn’t. When I read the secret life plants. I wasn’t remembering

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all those things that I used to feel and think when I was little. It’s just a magnetic right? It kind of it evolves with you. It’s like when you watch a plant grow and it it kind of over time. The leaves take on more characteristic form, but you know the tiny plants unfurling, and it’s you know it’s all kind of

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it’s all connected. Anyway. I love how you mix those cues showed that progression. And how all these pieces sort of flow into that, that organic movement that takes you where you are today. Because I think that that’s really true for so many of us.

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It’s just that we’re taught that you’re supposed to have that boom moment right? That one thing. And it really isn’t true. I mean everybody’s journey is filled with these like little tiny nudges. That kind of took us in these directions, and things like you said that maybe when you were younger or years ago. You didn’t even see you didn’t know that they were playing into something, but that now

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you realize how they play into it. I also I completely empathize like I can feel it in my body as you were talking about it. That whole upside, downy thing that happens when you give yourself that opportunity to listen deeply to things that we don’t ever give space. Because if I tell somebody okay, I just want you to sit and listen. Most likely they’re going to sit where they are

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with their head up, and they’re going to listen to kind of the airspace. But even I also in several of the classes that I do in person. I encourage people, and even some of the meditations that I have, for example, on Youtube and insight timer. I encourage people

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to like you said, put your ear down to the ground, especially if you could do it on a root, for example, on a tree, or in something that’s very root dense, like. I do it often in grass. I love lying on the grass feeling that connection, and then turning my head with the intention of like having my ear really close to that kind of

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the soil root structure. Exactly, exactly. And it’s always you always get something unexpected, because you do. Sometimes you feel you hear interaction. To a certain extent, whatever the the actual sounds are, doesn’t even matter. But the feeling is interaction, like

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there’s got to be ants and spiders and and like exactly. And then other times, it’s it’s the combination of the other. You know, the types of grasses, or of small wild plants that are in there. I don’t know why I actually just so I did. I did a photo shoot the last time I was in the Us. And at the very end she asked me because we did it outside in nature, and she asked me, she’s like, Do you have any photos that you want to take, and I’m like, yes, I was dressed in like a cute little dress.

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and I’m like, I want to lie down, and I need photos of me lying down, because it’s such a

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formative feeling modality for me that takes me out of the kind of human air head in the air type of thing, and brings me down exactly, brings me down to a completely different level. And I love that that also informed the way that you kind of

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have been progressing through this, which is kind of whole body, right? Whole sensation, not just. It’s so much more exciting, I think, that way, and more true to the nature of the plants that you’re working in and such.

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So here’s the forward looking question, or at least present looking question, what do you think has really changed in the way that you think about, or experience or interact with plants since you started to work on this? And you have kind of a new expression like you’ve been able to experience this new form of expression with plants.

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Wow, I mean, it’s it’s kind of in.

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It’s intertwined with a very personal

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part of my journey. I mean, the experience of having a deeper relationship with them is very personal. But I actually I’ve had. I was born without enough bone on my hips, and that got kind of progressively harder as I got older, more painful.

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and different complications. And then in the run up to sort of starting to work with them in the way that I am, I was told. You know you’ve got to have major surgery.

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and I was put on this wait list. And then Covid happened, and there was this waiting time. You know it was. I was meant to be on a wait list for a year. It turned out to be like whatever I think, 3 and a half years or something, and they restructured my body, so they cut the bones to pieces, pinned me back together again loads of metal, and so I you know it was quite intense, and I only just had the bolts out of

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few months ago, and there was a bit of recovery on that. And so this whole time they’ve been with me.

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and I mean I thought I was going to become like Mega genius in my recovery, and just like Code all the time, and like.

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turn into the most all of this, and I’m like, no, no, my brain was like mush. I could do nothing I could like. I couldn’t even watch TV for longer than 5 min for about a year. You know, it’s like I was. I was mashup, but I constantly had my plants around me, and that relationship evolving. And you know, and I had the project kind of helping me

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kind of feel like like. It’s like compassion, right? It’s like

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all of my plants are brilliant artists in their own right, and and they’re all growing at their own rate. And they’re all

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being in their own way, and they’re all blooming when it’s their moment, you know they don’t all. Sometimes they bloom similar times, and not all of my plants bloom. But you know, like I think, what I’m curving back to is something that I find really important at this time is to remember that we’re embedded in a system of like constant harvest

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where it’s like, Okay, we need to like continually harvest everything. Now, you know, like, give me give me my crop, give me my Mcdonald’s. Give me my, you know this that you know. Give, take, take, take, make, flowers bloom, bloom. Come on, you know it’s performative. It’s on demand. It’s it’s extractive.

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and you know, and it’s this thing of like, I almost had this extractive mentality around my recovery like, Well, I’ve started this thing, and while I’m you know, unable to do. XYZ. I’ll extract and I’ll perform, and I’ll produce. And instead, it was just like, No, just be

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just actually be. And obviously, you know, still had things going on, and had to work and and worked with the plants a bit. But it’s like this as my journey has unfolded with them. It’s like a sense of contentedness

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over, however tiny or big I am. You know, each plant is like like you was. You kind of. You’ve touched upon before, where you know a time, a tiny plant can have a very

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big energy. And actually, some really big plants have quite soft, gentle energy. And it’s not what you think it’s going to be, and you know not. All the leaves unfurl at the same time. Not all flowers bloom every year, you know each each. We’re not meant to extract from ourselves, and we’re not meant to extract from each other. I mean, we do like, maybe that’s a bit of a blanket statement. But it’s like this sense of like

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the actual fruition, the actual blooming, and the actual emanation of

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kind of meaning and meaning making and creativity is kind of.

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I guess it’s embedded in like a loving reality if we let it be. And I think it’s that softness that I’ve

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kind of had a mirror. I’ve always kind of been considered a bit too soft, and you know I’ve got more like my edgy side. But you know I’m quite gentle creature, really. And it’s like being with plants. It’s like, it’s okay, you know, you don’t have to be like performative and edgy, and like constantly out to get something like you can just be

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that being part, that that presence is a recurring, it’s 1 of the things that I love about doing this podcast for example, is that it’s given me the opportunity to meet so many incredible people that are working so closely with plants in these.

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I don’t want to say alternative ways, but in the sense of not just your traditional like, I work in a garden center or any of these things. But more of

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of this co-creative and co-expressive aspect, and this

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this theme of being, of presence seems to be so continuous. It’s something that comes up with pretty much everybody, and I love it because it’s it’s what for me has become my plantness like when I think about the importance of humanity reawakening their inner plantness. It is that piece, that plantness where our instinctiveness right, our humanness, gives us our instincts, gives us our motion and and our velocity to a certain

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extent and our ability to like move, and that our that our action is tied to movement. Where I feel like our plantness is about our actions tied to beingness about presence. And and they’re both really important, like, nobody is trying to say that as we work closer with plants, we’re supposed to forget our humanness. On the contrary, it’s a reminder of our true humanness, which is this

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total aspect, that sure we have a preponderance, obviously of the action and of the movement, energy because we are animals. But that doesn’t mean that I forget, or let, or completely let go of

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this other side of myself, which is that presence and presence can be very active. Right presence and beingness can still be an active force in your life. It’s just not a movement in that perspective, and it has also varying degrees, and it reminds us the importance of rest, and it reminds us the importance of recognizing and being aware of where we are of when I need to move

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of, when I need to sit of, when I need to be fast, when I need to be slow, when I need to be big, and when I need to be small, like all these things of beingness is that it’s almost like you. Reconnect to your full scope. You have access to, and you choose which ones

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some of them you might never touch, because it’s just not part of who you are, but you have access. Now, because in that beingness the the blocks that we normally have sort of fade away, and we have the opportunity to be all these things, and and that to me is precious. It’s super precious. And actually, it’s so interesting one of my projects that I kind of it’s an ongoing research around Earth energies.

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and specifically the Schumann resonances, and like there was quite a lot of Hoo-ha over the fundamental Schumann resonance, which is like on average 7.8 3 hertz. It goes kind of I don’t know half a hertz below that, and half a hertz above that bounces around. It’s a natural phenomenon, right? So it’s not like a

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a specific wanting. But and but there are all these harmonics that are kind of a set that go alongside that fundamental. And you know, the fundamental is the kind of resting point, as it were, and that’s just about in our kind of resting mind space. So our brain.

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you know the the different brain states, which again, aren’t like some fixed point. But you’ve got your you know. What is it, Delta? Deep sleep, theta kind of meditative.

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Beta active Alpha gamma, all the all the different ones. So you you literally these are embedded in the planet.

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and these are embedded in our minds. And these influence, these sort of different resonances influence all of life on Earth, or or a lot of it, most of it. And they’re finding now that the human resonances can have an impact on plants and plant growth. And and what they found when they looked at these Earth energies is that

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about was one study. I can’t remember the name of it. Maybe there’s a few, but about half of the. I think they scanned about a thousand people so like it. To me it seemed credible when I read it, and it was like about half of people’s

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kind of brain pattern.

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The the brainwave changes sort of shifted and seemed in sync with the planet. And so it’s kind of like.

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And and obviously like in a lot of urban environments. I’m in London. It’s like, it’s quite a lot of electro smog, you know. It’s like a lot of electrical noise, and they generally have the centers to like receive the data from the Earth energies in kind of mountains, and more like remote locations, so they can hear them without all the noise. And you know I find this interesting, this whole kind of

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bridging a human like more than half the population of the world are in urban environments. Now. I can’t remember what it’s like, maybe 60% or something. So and being that everywhere’s 5G, and everywhere’s like

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hyper, techno, electro smoggy, you know, it’s like, how do we channel and stay true to the antenna being that we are for nature? And how do we commune in ways that are beneficial for our bodies and our sense of connection with each other. And and so, yeah, like, I feel like, trees are kind of conduits

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for different Earth energies. And so, you know, spending time with. There’s lots of trees in a lot of cities, you know. Not all, but, you know, just

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touch a tree to be with them. And and yet I think plants can act as sort of special conduits. And I’ve also noticed, like we ourselves can support nature in urban environments. Because, you know, like I my old flat, actually that there was this kind of crisscross of where all of the

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where all of the mobile pylon signals kind of crisscrossed, and I kept noticing like bees, especially big bumblebees, were getting super exhausted at these intersections, and I was having to like, go get them, pick them up, feed them honey, water, and walk them down the road out of this crisscross and like.

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I can only imagine that that’s sort of affecting our minds and our ability to feel in sync with our own natural rhythms. And you know the natural rhythm of our environments. We’ve got like these synthesized environments. So I guess what kind of got me onto doing the plant art? Was this feeling like.

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I’m okay to whisper to trees and plants. And I’m okay to hug them and touch them. And I’m okay with all that. But people think I’m weird. So how do we build a bridge where it’s

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you kind of introduce something that people can see and and hear and interact with. Then it’s safe again, because there’s a reason. Right? It’s okay. So yeah, I think that was like something that

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I like that. I like that. Also that that’s almost especially because, like you said in urban environments, I do think it’s important for people to realize that also plants help you attenuate like they help you

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shift your own frequency and vibration, and understand, like your body, rhythm, and such. It helps you adapt, because, especially if you have older plants of any sort, especially, you know, older trees. I remember being walking through Shepherd’s Bush many, many years ago, and walking through Shepherd’s Bush, and literally like touching every single tree. I was doing a combination of orienting of trees. Which is this project connected here to dominoes.

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but also like connection. And I had an older gentleman who asked me like he was like, I can see that you’re doing something. But what are you doing? And it was really he was very sweet, and I was like, and I told him what I was doing in the sense of the orienting of the trees. But also, you know, these trees, especially when you know in Shepherd’s Bush. If you’re in that area, these beautiful, I think they’re like

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pseudosycamores, or I can’t remember exactly which kind of trees they are. But you know these trees have been there for a while. They’re not newly planted, and so, therefore they’ve been able to adapt themselves to be able to thrive in that environment. And so that was part of what I was doing right like

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connecting in and saying, I’m in this city environment. It’s super dense. It has all these aspects that you were just talking about. Help me be okay. Help me find the rhythm that works that that is like. It’s not my probably natural rhythm. It’s not the rhythm I have when I’m living somewhere else, but it is a rhythm that that can be natural to me. So just as you’ve adapted, help me adapt, help me connect

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into what it is that I need to do. And I think that you’re right, that these projects, these types of projects that act to a certain extent as bridges. They help people sort of feel safe enough to, you know, not everybody feels safe in the weird and the woo, like we do. Right? So so this helps them see something that they can grasp onto with the way that they’ve been taught. And they say, Okay, well, now, I’ll let myself sort of go into it, and I’ll let myself connect into it

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because I see this part and that. That’s that’s exactly. I often tell people that with the music of the plants, I’m like the plants, to a certain extent, are

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using kind of human rhythms and human sounds. And that’s okay, because it’s their way of for some people that is going to be the only way that the person is going to let their guard down and let them reconnect. It’s under. It’s like having a Duolingo in in a sense, isn’t it? Yeah, like, okay, that, you know, like, it’s an interpretation interpreter

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absolutely, absolutely

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am. So this this is probably again, like many of our conversations, just ones that we could just go on and on about all the cool things that we’re understanding and developing. And I love it. I love it so much, and I love that we finally were simple to sit down. Because I do feel people like I said, people like you are bridging this gap for a lot of people. And at the same time

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you’re creating more languages for the plants to be able to express themselves in this human world like not all of us can go out into the middle of the jungle. And so it’s beautiful to have these other ways that plants. I have a painting on my wall that was drawn. It was painted by a chimpanzee.

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and it’s a great, you know, way for somebody like me, who probably will never be around a chimpanzee to constantly think in chimpanzee energy, and to feel the expression an artistic expression from the chimpanzee and the colors that were chosen, and how this chimpanzee did it, and what are all the like? It’s abstract art, and I absolutely adore it. So to me this is kind of the exact same thing.

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This is giving plants. Another avenue that helps them, you know, helps us communicate and connect and express and experience and learn, and all those beautiful things.

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So, Sophie, where can people find you? I mean, obviously.

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I’m going to put everything into the show notes. But I want you to tell, how do people see what you’re creating, and how do they get in touch with you? If they want to learn more? Well, you can find me on my website, which is flow and echo.com

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flow of water, and the linking red echo like echolocation.com.

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and also on Instagram. Same tag.

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And yeah, I mean, I haven’t been exhibiting as much as I was lately, but I have been getting involved in solar punk events, so I do a bit of exhibiting at different kind of kind of community based. You know, it’s kind of artivism activism, you know, we’re doing lots of different events around London. So that’s sort of bubbling up.

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And yeah, so at the moment I’m quite London based.

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I yeah, I’ve got a few events kind of coming up soon, but not on my website. So I guess I better chuck them in there. But yeah, so you can, you can find me find, keep in touch with me on Insta. That would be great, perfect. Well, I’ll make sure that I’ll include you know your handle and all of the links to your website and such

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in the show notes, and of course, as always, as things come up, I’ll post them into the naturally conscious community and share them out with others, so that we can continue this conversation and exploring these topics.

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Lately I’ve been having lots. I’ve been traveling a lot more, and I’ve been having lots of conversations on all of these different methods that are coming out relating to connections. So I have a feeling that the coming year especially is going to bring us to a whole new level of this type of expression and co-creation. So I’m very, very excited to see where everything goes. So this has been

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really wonderful. I am so excited we finally got to do it, and I am so happy that people get to learn more about you and your work. Any last words before we go.

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That’s a really good question. I actually did have notes for the conversation. We look at the notes, and I think, did that.

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hey?

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I like it. She’s going through her notes. It looks like we’ve touched everything. So yeah, so no, I do want to expand a little bit on the solar punk theme. If that’s okay, of course, solar punk. And actually, we’re running events under the subgenre echo punk. It is like, the I think the reason it’s poignant for me. Is we?

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I mean, I know, growing up in the eighties and nineties. It’s like non-stop visions of dystopic futures, or like

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cyberpunk kind of settings, or like everything’s decimated in the future. It’s like, or it’s kind of weird and like emotions very abstract and zeroed out, you know. So very like 1984 or like, you know. And it’s like, so I’m like, well, collectively, our collective vision. We need to get a handle on things like stuff is changing. It has to change.

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and I think you know, it is changing. I think, like like, it’s easy to get scared with the way that the oligarchs are running the world, and the way that everything is so hell bent on. Yeah, like a constant harvest push for extraction, more more taking from the planet, you know. Like, how is this? Gonna

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how is this going to slow down? I think it’s easy to get lost there in the crises that we’re embedded in. And you know the poly crisis, all the different things happening to the forests and and to the natural landscape

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in which humans are subject to an abstractual system that you know doesn’t let them live in harmony with nature. You know it’s kind of like a privilege, you know, position to be able to like.

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I don’t know. Just go build an amazing world cabin somewhere, you know, like a lot of people are locked down in kind of simple scenarios, and I think like, and sometimes very painful ones, you know, like

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good.

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It’s it’s it’s this feeling that we need to collectively vision things in a more adaptive way

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and a low impact way. And I think, like the solar punk and eco-punk genres are kind of it’s being able to see that we do have a lot of solutions, and I definitely feel like plants will be painting and singing and making a lot of music and doing. And we’ll definitely be visualizing a lot of the Earth energies that maybe we need to bathe in more.

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And you know there’s going to be a lot of beautiful creative intervention. And then it’s this adaptive quality for our communities, you know, where we’ll be farming in the cities more, and we’ll be sharing that produce in a different way. And you know, if we don’t vision these things, I’m not saying it’s easy, or that I’ve got all the answers, or I do believe that most of the solutions we need are here. I think it’s a

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a management issue like getting it to like

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fit in in a way where communities do have autonomy to sort of collectively make choices and start to like

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rein in a pull in what we need. In in lower impact ways. And you know, we’re kind of subject to this, like constant control from markets of like, Buy, sell, buy, sell what’s cheapest, what’s

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what’s available, and I think, you know, actually repurposing and reusing and remaking. And all of these things that kind of lead to a more circular economy are kind of embedded in those creative genres. So they’re why I’m kind of making events

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in in them. Because I, for one, I’m bored of seeing dystopic features

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on on the movies. And that’s all we got. Is that all we’ve got? Is that it

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right? Right? What else have we got? Yeah. And I’m glad that you brought this up, and I’m glad that that’s like our closing message. Because, for example, when I founded the naturally conscious community a large, and when I started, especially in this podcast bringing on so many different kinds of artists and and in nature inspired, but not just artists, that, like there’s beautiful people out there that are, you know, painting flowers and stuff like that. But what I wanted was that co-creation

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because I wanted to provide those other models. And I love, that you said that that these are the genres that are coming out, that are helping, using that artistic flair and that co-created flair. In other words, the the nonlinear, non-human logic of other kin connected with the visionary aspects of the artistic mind that can see something that doesn’t exist in order for us to

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start to have places where we can visualize, or, you know, synthesize, or whatever it might be, a version of the future. That is the thing we actually want to live in rather than continuously following the Hollywood model. That shows us what we don’t want to see, what we’re headed for as what it is so I think that that’s a beautiful note to close in is to remember that the supporting these types of projects and these types of genres and places like the

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conscious community and events, for, like solar punk and echo punk and artistic spaces and co-created spaces are super important to support, because they are the visionaries that are giving us the opportunity to see the next incarnation of our world, the evolution we’re moving towards rather than just getting stuck in the past. So

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I thank you for saying that. And that’s why I encourage everybody who’s listening, who’s watching? Go and check these genres out, you know. Go and see, where are there events of this type? Go into the naturally conscious community, go to places like Sophie’s work and see that. And.

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you know, share out what it is that we’re doing and support it, and and give yourself space to be in it, to to also be in that creative process. We all have an opportunity to give our piece. That’s a perfect, perfect place to end. So thank you again, Sophie, so much. Thank you for this, and thank you all. And this is another reminder to always, always remember, remember.

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2, resist the urge to hold back your emerging green brilliance. This is really the place where we’re going to create the next generation, you know. Resist that urge, create those spaces for yourself, and give yourself the opportunity to co-create the next evolution of your own life.

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Thanks for tuning in to this episode of reconnect with plant wisdom

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to continue these conversations. Join us in the naturally conscious community. Your premier online ecosystem for plant reawakening and accelerated evolution and co-creation with other kin.

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Here you’ll find expansive discussions, interactive courses, live events and supportive group programs like the plant, Wisdom book, club, and the sprouts, writing and creativity

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connect with like-minded individuals collaborating with plants to integrate these insights into life.

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intro and outro music by Steve Sciulli and poinsettia from the singing life of plants. That’s it for me, Tigrilla Gardenia and my plant collaborators until next time. Remember, resist the urge to hold back your emerging green brilliance.

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I’m out bye