My Garden Path | Hiromi Tango

Hiromi Tango reflects on how gardening, art and mindfulness come together as a practice of care, creativity and connection.

“This poem brings me to centre and home.” For Hiromi, the practice of yoga is deeply intertwined with gardening- both are grounding rituals that bring presence and peace. As an interdisciplinary artist who calls herself a gardener, she sees no separation between creative expression and cultivating the earth.

Growing up in a traditional Japanese household on Shikoku Island, Hiromi was surrounded by making and growing. Both her grandmothers were kimono makers and gardeners, and this upbringing instilled in her a lifelong appreciation for nurturing plants, working with her hands and living sustainably. Growing food, upcycling and recycling were simply part of everyday life and remain central to her identity today.

Her garden is both productive and expressive. Inspired by a “Monet Garden,” it provides a rich colour palette that informs her artwork, while also producing healing food for her family. Hiromi shares simple, accessible ways to propagate plants such as capsicums grown easily from saved seeds, tomatoes that thrive across seasons in her environment, and spring onions that regrow from kitchen scraps. She also grows strawberries, herbs like lavender and rosemary, Australian natives, pigface and ginger which are plants that flourish with minimal intervention.

Beyond growing food, Hiromi creates “art gardens” - spaces that cultivate hope, humanity and kindness. She invites community members to donate clothing filled with personal memories, which she transforms into vibrant, flower-like forms. Sorted into rainbow colours and cut into varied shapes, these materials become symbolic “seeds” and “seedlings,” expressing light, nature and emotional connection.

Her large-scale projects extend this philosophy into public spaces. Garden – Healing Together for Tweed Valley Hospital was designed to transform the hospital into a nurturing, comforting environment. In Brisbane, her work Roots at Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens uses bronze casts of palm flowers to form circular sculptures centred on the idea of healing seeds. Her Dream Flower peony, created for Brisbane Festival, layers aluminium petals of different sizes and colours into a vibrant, rainbow-like form celebrating diversity.

Hiromi’s personal journey is equally woven into her creative life. She met her husband, artist Craig Walsh, while studying in Tokyo and proposed to him at 21, beginning a shared life of art and growth. Moving to Australia in 1998, she has now spent nearly three decades here, raising a family and finding her voice.

Today, that voice extends into environmental care. Hiromi and her family are planting eucalyptus trees to create a koala corridor, helping restore habitat lost to bushfires and floods. After years without sightings, the return of two koalas to the area has been a deeply moving sign of hope.

For Hiromi, nature is everything - “our heart space.” Gardening is not just about plants, but about nurturing, nourishment, deep listening and observation. It is, she says, the most important element of life.

Bundjalung Country | Tweed Heads, NSW

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