an index of botanical desires - notes on touch

My perennial interest in the relationship between humans and nature is often centered upon the sense of touch.

How do we use our bodies to relate to our environment? What can we learn from touching, carrying, holding, stroking?

This hand-assembled zine reflects my ongoing exploration of the human relationship with nature through the lens of touch, archival material, and experimental image-making.

The images were sourced from a vintage set of The New Illustrated Encyclopedia of Gardening (T.H. Everett) that I salvaged from an abandoned greenhouse in Kansas City in 2011—spaces long emptied of their plants and caretakers. Now, 14 years later, these mildewed and forgotten volumes were remixed into a new context, with a focus on the labor and intimacy of gardening.

Made by hands, for hands. Published by Plant Thief Press.

"It is the body that knows how to touch what is invisible. It is the body that guides the hand to find what is hidden, what is lost." — Clarice Lispector, Água Viva

“In the ruins of a Kansas City greenhouse, a forgotten set of gardening encyclopedias lay buried in dust and humidity. Their pages, softened by time, held the smell of soil and seasons long passed. It was 2011, and what remained was not just information—but a presence, waiting to be reawakened.

This discovery wasn’t archival; it was tactile. Madeline Cass touched before reading.

She let the books guide her fingers, not to answers, but to processes: how to kneel beside the unknown, how to stay with the question. It reminded her that knowledge often begins in the body—through gesture, curiosity, and attention.

As she worked, she noticed how learning happens when we are allowed to explore, to follow wonder without interruption. The books became more than reference—they became co-conspirators in creating space for slowness, for observation, for emergence. They echoed a quiet truth: growth doesn’t always need instruction, just the right conditions.

This piece—like those encyclopedias—is both artifact and offering. A gesture toward remembering how we learn, not by being told, but by being allowed to touch.”

Tipi Bookshop