Artisans of Dartmoor - Book - Page 123
THE FLORAL ARTIST
Drawing on her knowledge of ‘micro seasons’, Joanna Game creates
arrangements that capture the fleeting life stages of flowers
F
ew people are as finely attuned to the ebb and
flow of Dartmoor’s botanical life as Joanna
Game. A floral artist with an eye for intricate
detail, she follows the intimate, fleeting life stages
of the moor’s plant world, and captures them in
naturalistic flower arrangements that have garnered
her a loyal following.
Joanna is a devotee of a Japanese calendar system
which holds that, along with the four traditional
seasons, the natural world also has 73 micro-seasons
called kō, each lasting about five days. She first
learnt about the concept in a book called Tokachi
Millennium Forest, by Dan Pearson, a celebrated
gardener and author. Around Joanna’s moorland
home, a kō might be the unfurling of a fern, a lily
at its peak or a perfectly plump blackberry. But
with each phenomenon lasting such a short time,
capturing these miniature markers before they
morph into a new stage requires her to be quick
– or wait another year.
Through her 30-year career as a florist, most
recently specialising in British cultivars, Joanna has
developed what the Japanese refer to as kisetsukan
– an acute awareness of the seasons. “I can do the
same walk every day and notice something different
every time. Once you start looking closely, you
realise we are surrounded by exquisite and infinite
detail. I like to show that in my work.”
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