Weeds to Wildflowers
In 2020, Serena Kovalosky began exploring the “weeds” in her vegetable garden, that has been cultivated for over six decades on the family homestead, by allowing some of them to mature.
By summer the garden had become a wild field of fleabane, red clover, apple mint, wood asters, brown-eyed Susans and more.
Kovalosky noticed an increase in bees, dragonflies and monarch butterflies that hadn’t visited the garden since childhood.
This prompted a multi-year project of turning the entire yard into a biodynamic eco-garden, which also informs Kovalosky’s artistic explorations into the interconnectivity of nature for her sculptural work.
CLICK IMAGE to read Serena Kovalosky’s journal on the development of The Eco-Garden Project.
A Biodiversity Inventory
In 2022, Kovalosky began work on an All-Taxa Biodiversity Inventory to identify all the plant species on the property, allowing sections of the yard to grow wild and chronicling her discoveries and the stories and memories behind each plant. In the course of her explorations, she discovered an American elm tree growing underneath the porch (that her mother repeatedly tried to remove) and field pennycress that may become part of a research project with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to determine its biodiesel potential. To date, Kovalosky’s inventory has reached well over 50 plant species.
CLICK IMAGE for an All-Taxa Biodiversity Inventory of plant species identified to date and the artist’s stories behind each plant.
Serena Kovalosky 