I Call It a ‘Garden’, a Place of Seeds

Description

Geoffrey Dutton (1924–2010) was a distinguished biomolecular scientist who was simultaneously also a poet, mountaineer, wild water swimmer, and the creator, caretaker and chronicler of a Highland garden in Perthshire, Scotland. Dutton saw no conflict between science and poetry, and eight acres of a steep and rugged hillside provided him with an experimental ground to explore this and other complex interrelationships in his search for the new. For fifty years, Dutton maintained what he called a ‘marginal garden’ – a marginal site guided with marginal effort to maximum marginal effect. His lifelong ecological dialogue with the garden was ahead of its time and is today largely forgotten, despite Dutton’s multiple publications in both prose and verse.

Amid the garden’s slow transition back into the wild margin, the event was a celebration – of a special place, a singular body of work and an insatiably curious individual.

The event included a screening of 1992 BBC2 Gardeners’ World feature on the garden, a panel discussion and a poetry reading. A publication of essays and photographs was published on the occasion and launched as part of the event.

With Barbara Prezelj (ESALA), Alec Finlay (artist/poet), Billy Lucas (gardener/landscape architect) and Kirsty Jones (Geoffrey Dutton’s daughter).

About Geoffrey Dutton
Geoffrey Dutton (1924–2010) dedicated his life to environmental exploration – from practicing pioneering medical science as a biochemistry professor to his ventures into poetry, writing, gardening, wild water swimming and climbing. Following his studies at Edinburgh University, he continued his scientific career in Dundee and built a home on a steep, rugged Perthshire hillside where he established and took care of a ‘marginal garden.’ His lifelong dialogue with the garden led to Harvesting the Edge (1994), Some Branch Against the Sky (1997) and The Year’s Colour in a Marginal Garden (1998). He passionately campaigned for the invigorating power of wild waters in Swimming Free (1972) and kept a foot on the mountain by editing the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal from 1960 to 1971. For an exploration into what lies at the intersection of his various interests, he chose verse—“to bare the essential unity of what we encounter – not passive union but dynamic equilibrium” —and published five volumes of poetry: 31 Poems (1977), Camp One (1978), Squaring the Waves (1986), The Concrete Garden (1991) and The Bare Abundance (2002).

Period	30 Jan 2025
Event type	Other