Juliana Davis (’15), KWS Gardening, Art, and Handwork Teacher
It is evening, I am driving with all the windows down; horizontal rays of sunshine cut through the humid July air, signaling the end of another day. The day had been scorching hot, I had left the garden at noon to escape the heat. Now, as I pull into the driveway, I feel a cool breeze as the sun starts to dip below the tree-lined horizon. Fields of winter rye and wheat glow a fiery shade of gold and a couple of barn swallows dive for insects. Returning to the garden at this hour feels magical. The colors have returned, no longer washed out by the white-hot sun.
With my pruners in hand, I go out to the row of tomatoes planted a week or two prior. Crouching down, I give each plant my attention, removing the suckers (which grow between the main stem and the tomato’s branches) and any dead leaves. When I look up from my work, the sky is a striking shade of lavender. Plumes of fluffy clouds radiate from a fuchsia glow feathering out into shades peach and rose. This is the gift of spending every day in the garden, with each passing moment the natural world shifts and changes revealing something new.
As a child, Waldorf education helped me to continually connect with my sense of wonder in the world. Whether observing the surface of a lake in a physics class, finding beautiful patterns in geometry, or uncovering hidden meanings in poetry, classes at KWS connected wonder and curiosity to inquiry and discovery. As a student I became aware of the interconnected quality of many disciplines, allowing my classmates and I to make connections between math and art, or science and history.
After graduating KWS in 2015, I earned my BA in Studio Art from the College of Wooster, all-the-while farming in the summers. In 2019 I spent a full season on an organic vegetable farm in New York. In 2020 I moved back to Pennsylvania and accepted a part-time gardening position at Longwood Gardens. I loved gardening, but I dearly missed creating artwork with other people, and in 2021 I accepted a place in Tyler School of Art’s M.Ed. in Art Education program. In 2021 I also joined KWS as a staff member for the first time, assisting Annaleena Hoffman with Handwork for a year. Over the course of three years, I taught in different schools and settings, all the while continuing my work at Longwood Gardens. In May of 2024 I graduated with my M.Ed. in Art Education, and I could not be more delighted to return to Kimberton Waldorf School!
As gardening teacher, I am excited to share my passion for the natural world with each of my students. Together we will make connections between what we grow in the garden to art, science, culture, and more. I especially look forward to sharing that feeling of wonder revealed in each day.
