Pallavi Sen, Experimental Greens: Trellis Composition, 2023, seeds, plant starts, soil, compost, rope, fasteners, ceramics, plaster, pigment, glass, pine, twine, irrigation, seasonal rain, sunlight, sticks. Courtesy of the artist. 

Pallavi Sen’s Experimental Greens: Trellis Composition is a garden located outside the entrance to the Lunder Center at Stone Hill. Sen is interested in the aesthetics of planning gardens, the labor of caring for them, and the slow and multisensory process of engaging with them. This garden is dotted with decorative and practical embellishments by the artist, whether to enhance the visitor’s experience or to monitor environmental factors like rainfall. Sen has planted several vegetable variants that she knows from her childhood in India, not just for nostalgia, but also for their heat and drought resistance—a useful trait given the changing climate of the northeast United States. The garden will be tended by the artist and Williams College students; the vegetables harvested will go to a local foodbank and the seeds will be saved and redistributed. 

To follow the garden’s progress and read student observations on it, visit www.hoophouse.org/experimental-greens or @experimentalgreens on Instagram.