There is something remarkable about dipping the end of a feather quill into a cup of homemade ink and discovering that it really does write like a pen.
Mine did...eventually.
On a recent afternoon at MSU’s Beal Botanical Garden, I joined about 45 people for a Deep Rooted Garden Workshop on oak gall ink — the dark, durable writing material used for centuries before modern ink became commonplace. By the end of the class, we had watched ink appear almost magically through chemistry, carved goose feathers into quill pens and discovered that writing like a medieval monk is a lot harder than it looks.
It was also a reminder that one of the most interesting classrooms at MSU doesn’t have walls.
The workshop was led by Maeve Bassett, Beal’s education director and an applied ethnobotanist who studies the relationships between people and plants. Her goal, she told the group, is to help people notice just how deeply plants are woven into our lives.
“We built our civilizations around them,” Bassett said. “We fed ourselves with them. We clothed ourselves with them. We healed ourselves with them. We made art using them and about them. We recorded our entirety of human history using plants.”
Case in point: oak gall ink. The recipe starts with galls, which are small growths that can form on oak trees when tiny gall wasps lay eggs in plant tissue. Those gnarly marbles contain high levels of tannins. Mix a tannin-rich liquid with iron and the reaction quickly creates a dark pigment. Gum arabic, a tree sap commonly used as a thickener, helps the resulting ink cling to the page.
Bassett demonstrated the process in front of us. The liquid changed almost instantly, darkening into the familiar black of ink. Then came the quills.
Using goose feathers and small blades, participants trimmed away feathers, shaped the quill ends and cut tiny slits designed to hold the ink. My first attempt was less Declaration of Independence and more “bird-related workplace accident,” but after some coaching by Bassett, it worked.
The Deep Rooted series, a collaboration between Beal Botanical Garden and the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, uses experiences like this to explore connections between art, plants and human history. During much of the year, programs take place at the Broad Art Museum. In summertime, Bassett said, they move into the garden, where participants can get a little messier.
That combination of serious learning and playful discovery is part of what makes Beal special.
Founded as a teaching garden, Beal is available to MSU instructors and their students for demonstrations, discussions and hands-on research. Garden staff can help develop presentations on topics ranging from native and invasive plants to pollinators, and outdoor tables can be reserved for classes. Instructors also can request permits when they need plant material for teaching or research.
And you don’t need to teach botany to find a connection.
Bassett’s position is that nearly any subject can lead back to plants: art, history, chemistry, food, medicine and even subjects that might seem far removed from a botanical garden. That makes Beal not just a collection of plants, but a university resource with thousands of possible entry points for teaching and exploration.
It is just as welcoming if you aren’t bringing a class.
The garden, tucked between the Main Library and I.M. Circle, is open to everyone from sunrise to sunset year-round, and admission is free. Its thousands of woody and herbaceous plants make it a place to learn, but also a good place to walk, sit, take a break or simply notice something you have probably passed a dozen times without really seeing.
More opportunities to explore are coming. Bassett is planning additional Deep Rooted programs connected with an upcoming Broad Art Museum exhibition, including activities involving Beal’s new Conjure Garden, which focuses on plants of the African diaspora. Her popular Twilight Tour series also returns around Halloween.
By the end of the ink workshop, people were comparing quills, admiring each other’s handwriting and experimenting with a technology that would have been ordinary hundreds of years ago.
Garden, wellness center, concert hall, chemistry lab, history classroom, writing workshop — that’s Beal in a nutshell, or maybe, an oak gall.
