Christin Geall: An Interview with the Floral Designer and Writer

When we asked Christin Geall for “the real reason she gardens,” the floral designer, writer, photographer, and educator responded with a literary quote: “I’m borrowing from Joan Didion who said the following about writing, but you can switch up the verb: ‘I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.’ ” To Christin, gardening isn’t just about growing plants; it provides a lens through which to understand the world. 

A trained horticulturalist (via the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew), committed environmentalist (double major in Environmental Studies and Anthropology), and thoughtful writer (MFA in Creative Nonfiction), Christin now travels widely to teach, speak, and write. Below, she shares the reasons she’s conflicted about modern-day gardening, the sure-fire method of extending the vase life of cut flowers, and the garden she calls “humbling, inspiring, and if you read his poetry as a part of your visit, transformational.”

Photography by Christin Geall, unless otherwise noted.

Your first garden memory:

I loved bugs as a child and made circuses for caterpillars from twigs, leaves and flowers. When I was very young, I discovered ants on peony buds. I suspect they were at my height and I remember watching them, not knowing why they were there or why they seemed so busy. Today I know it is a kind of mutualism—the ants eat sugars from nectaries and protect the flowers from other insects.

Garden-related book you return to time and again:

The Phaidon books FLOWER: Exploring the World in Bloom and PLANT: Exploring the Botanical World. They’re art history books predominantly, but packed with botanical, political, and historical insights. This isn’t really a plug, but I often return to my first book [Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style] when I’m feeling flat about my writing. If I can appreciate decent sentences about plants, it helps me write more of them. It’s the same with gardening to some degree—if I look at pictures of past successes, it fuels my hope for the future.

Instagram account that inspires you:

@sustainablefloristry out of Australia.

Describe in three words your garden aesthetic.

Productive. Collected. Confused.

Plant that makes you want to run the other way:

Amaranth: I love it as a cooked vegetable and know it is fabulous as a cut flower, but just looking at those seeds makes me itch. Tied for first place in the cringey cultivated category is Chinese Forget-Me-Not (Cynoglossum amiable), which has seeds capable of sticking in your socks (through multiple washes) and is the bane of pet owners. It’s one to be careful with, given its pioneering+settler instincts.

Plant that makes you swoon:

I went to South Africa last year and swooned over so many plants, it felt like a rapture. (I’ve still not recovered).

Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:

This is a tough one to write: gardening today isn’t very ecologically-friendly. Or at least not the type of contemporary gardening that demands raised beds, hardscaping, irrigation, fencing, greenhouses, soil amendments, bedding plants, lawn care, plastic, netting, pumps, lighting, etc., etc. As gardeners, I think we all should consider what our hobby or work demands of the earth. Western culture gave us the idea that we could or should have our own little Eden and, more recently, that gardening or floral design is a form of “self-care.” It would behoove us to challenge these individualistic notions and consider less consumptive ways of engaging with nature. Basketry and forest bathing hold promise.