This practice-led research investigates how an expanded drawing practice explores the intimate collaborative relationship that has been progressively formed with two suburban vegetable garden sites and the more-than-human vitalities progressively encountered there. Parallel drawing and gardening processes have formed cyclical drawing sites, working simultaneously between labour-intensive graphite drawing work and garden compost drawings on the floor and calico substrates.

An ecological site-responsive approach has led to engagement with the garden as a materially active site. I have progressively developed homemade compost and garden soil as a regenerative drawing medium recycled throughout the duration of the project. This provided the potential to investigate the crucial acts of tending to often unseen labour and care, which led me to understand compost and garden soil as a complex accumulation of vitalities. This research has fostered the ecological engagements occurring in/with soil and investigated how these engagements may provide a relational understanding of the fluctuating nature of my vegetable garden as an everyday environment and as a generator for drawing.