Royal fern and Aster, with bees

This recording was made during the installation of a royal fern (Osmunda regalis) in your garden. Using a PlantWave, I recorded the plant’s electrical activity for about thirty minutes while it was still in its pot, ten minutes during planting, and another thirty minutes after it was in the ground. A second PlantWave was connected to an adjacent aster (Symphyotrichum sp.) that was already established and attracting pollinators.

Afterward, I brought the MIDI data back to my studio and imported it into my production setup. The session produced three MIDI tracks: one from the fern, one from the aster, and one combined track that captured control changes from both plants. For the fern, I used a Roland SH-2 plugin to create a low, grounding bass tone; for the aster, which was more active, I used a Fender Rhodes emulation; and for the combined control channel, I built a long, slow-moving pad with a Roland Juno-60 emulation. The track is 1 hr long, we started planting the fern at about 30 mins.