De kracht van één | Editorial #30

‘I remember the day I was cast out of paradise. The day when, as a nine-year-old girl, I walked into the garden and found myself regarding it like a postcard’, editor-in-chief Nicole Ex writes in the new summer issue of See All This. Read the editor’s letter here.

I remember the day I was cast out of paradise. The day when, as a nine-year-old girl, I walked into the garden and found myself regarding it like a postcard. How I went back into the house to try to make my entrance again, but that second attempt didn’t change this disruptive new worldview: that I was now looking at nature instead of being part of it.

Nicole Ex en Piet Oudolf in Oudolfs tuin in Hummelo, foto: sven signe den hartogh

We live in hopeful times when we, for the first time, are aware of the dead end we have entered into. Finding the way back on a global scale is a battle so monumental that we can only win it on personal grounds. That’s tricky enough, yet more simple than thinking you have to take on the fate of the entire world. Because that fate is not on you. But how? How can we feel connected to nature again? Perhaps the best place to experience the reciprocity between indoors and outdoors is the garden – or something close to a garden, a pot, a bed – because while you think you are taking care of the plants, the plants are taking care of you.

I’m sitting at Hauser & Wirth Menorca as I write this, for an interview with the founders, less than thirty meters from Piet Oudolf’s suptropical garden, which blooms in blue at the end of April. Oudolf has realized more than 100.000 square feet of paradise in his life. While making this issue, we noticed how casually everyone loves Piet. How could it be otherwise? He shows us how being connected to plants makes us more human, and demonstrates what one person can accomplish on his own – the unbeatable power and strength of one.

Plus one. Plus one…

This is the editor’s letter of See All This #30, summer 2023.

Out on June 2nd.
Order the issue here >