There’s something grounding and healing for me in the simple act of tending my garden. I find pleasure in every task, whether it’s weeding, planting, watering, pruning, or cutting fresh flowers, and in learning about each plant, one at a time. This summer I’ve acquainted myself with bugloss, coral bells in different colors, hostas, lavender, phlox, and hibiscus. Digging in the dirt and coaxing flowers and plants to flourish feels like nurturing myself as much as the garden, and it’s helped me navigate grief as well as brought quiet thrills and moments of peace. Whether I’m working alone or alongside a gardening friend, for 5 minutes or 5 hours, there is always something to be done. To me, gardening is the original artist’s palette, feeding both body and soul.

This is one of the many reasons the story of Scott Noel and Janice Wilke’s garden resonates with me. Together, Scott and Jan have created more than a garden.

They have built a living, evolving muse.

Scott’s paintings are a visual record of its beauty, devotion, and the passing of seasons. I’m delighted to share some of their story as well as a selection of works with you below.

Whether you are a gardener, an art lover, or both, I hope you’ll find them as nourishing to the eye and spirit as the garden itself.

Scott began painting Jan’s garden in 2000. The paintings, he says, are “a record of Jan’s experiments and inspirations and the completely unforeseen gifts growth and light bring into view."

For him, a garden is “itself, a composition,” but also a place of “change and improvisation as the garden and light move day by day."

Although mostly a studio-based painter, working from the garden has cultivated in him a “moment-to-moment openness to what happens visually and an awareness that certain moments such as the apogee of a flowering plant are like a window opening in the flow of becoming."

The paintings have evolved alongside the garden. Scott first made still lifes from the harvests, one favorite was titled Rosa Bianca and Mr. Stripey (a variety of eggplant and tomato), which Jan likes to imagine now lives with another gardener.

From there he moved to the garden in its entirety and, lately, to the garden in the context of their neighborhood—an expansion Jan “really likes.” Together, their work forms a living chronicle of care, experiment, and light across the seasons.