Steyn Viljoen
@steyn
Designer at CustomerOS. Gardener. Dad. Write at Viljoen Space about product, gardening and parenthood.
Steyn Viljoen
viljoen.space
To be a gardener is to give a fuck. To be a gardener is to be invested in a place—to know it, to protect it, to be present to it. How can we protect and heal ourselves and our planet if we’re not willing to step into, and value, the role of the gardener?
Georgina Reid • Audacious Gardening: On Daring to Care - Wonderground
The best work shapes the maker as much as the audience. The goal is to make something heavy, something with weight earned through genuine effort.
An unkink hose feels like…
The freedom to know your version of enough. Take a pause, any kind of pause at any kind of time and not beat yourself up for it.
Light speed clarity.
The freedom to not set huge radical business goals just cos everyone else is, cos it's just not your time to over-hustle.
Spaciousness.
The freedom to politely decline the
... See moreA chief gladness of gardening comes from its dual nature, from how it salves our longing for making order out of chaos but also frustrates it. There is elemental satisfaction in the reminder that we can never fully control nature — that, in fact, any sense of control is a childish fantasy, for we ourselves are children of nature, made by the... See more
The physician and writer, Oliver Sacks, explains the value of gardens:
“As a writer, I find gardens essential to the creative process; as a physician, I take my patients to gardens whenever possible. All of us have had the experience of wandering through a lush garden or a timeless desert, walking by a river or an ocean, or climbing a mountain and... See more
“As a writer, I find gardens essential to the creative process; as a physician, I take my patients to gardens whenever possible. All of us have had the experience of wandering through a lush garden or a timeless desert, walking by a river or an ocean, or climbing a mountain and... See more
James Clear • 3-2-1: Creative Ideas, Wealth, and Making Life a Celebration | James Clear
It was then I realised architecture is not about creating structures that are aesthetically pleasing or merely functional: it’s about designing spaces that evoke emotion and resonate with the human spirit. The Farnsworth House may have been a triumph of modernist design, but it lacked the warmth and humanity architecture should embody.
And this is crucial to our talk here, because these abilities – to link, annotate, change, summarize, copy, and share — these are the verbs of gardening.
We create more than ever, but it weighs nothing.... See more
AI now promises results without the reckoning, but frictionless creation leads to weightless rewards. No one dreams of merely pushing a button to generate their magnum opus. The output matters, but the intention, the struggle, the care is what makes it count — what gives it weight...
Weight is
