3/10/2023 0 Comments China cat sunflower imagery![]() The 1970 album, “American Beauty”, arguably the band’s best studio effort, has Mouse-Kelly’s stylized, electric-looking rose on the cover, a reference to the classic garden variety as well as the musical evocations of Americana from this quintessential American band. ![]() The Dead’s second live album from 1971 is untitled, but it’s commonly known as “Skull and Roses” thanks to the arresting cover art, a skeleton crowned with a garland of red roses, by artists Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly, based on an illustration for a 1913 edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The rose is by far the most important symbol in the band’s rich iconography. To get started, here are a few ideas for your very own Grateful Dead garden – and I welcome suggestions for plant references I’ve undoubtedly missed. You could use as your guiding principle this verse from “Scarlet Begonias” that every Deadhead knows by heart: Once in a while/you get shown the light/in the strangest of places/if you look at it right. Much like a Shakespeare garden, which includes many of the plants included in the Bard’s writings - a Grateful Dead garden would include as many of the plants referenced in the band’s lyrics as your climate or inclination allows (I’m gardening in Virginia, Zone 7a) However, instead of a formal layout that would seem antithetical to such a nonconformist group, I’d make it more of a journey of discovery with inspiration somewhere just around the next bend. ![]() This one from the summer ’94 tour has the grateful gardener on front. Summer tour t-shirts tended to include warm, mellow sunflower imagery.
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