‘Sensory delight’: WOZQ Collaborates with Botanic Garden for Second Annual Botanic Boogie

Music could be heard spilling out of the various houses in Lyman Plant House on Thursday, April 3 as students came after hours for the second annual Botanic Boogie, a collaboration between WOZQ, Smith's student-run radio station, and the botanic garden. Attendees milled about the garden, enjoying the themed playlists curated for each plant house by WOZQ DJs, sipping tea, and making artwork for WOZQ's annual zine (aptly named Dirt). 

Dillon Smith ’25, one of the WOZQ station managers, said their favorite part of the event was watching how much everyone was enjoying it. “There's a lot of ‘oohing and ahhing’ that goes on… people are feeling a lot of positive and sort of wondrous emotions. It's a very inspiring space on its own, [and] seeing it in this context inspires emotions which is very fun.”

Back by popular demand, the goal of the event was to create an interdisciplinary sensory experience, combining the immersive nature of the garden with the musical creativity of the WOZQ DJs. It also forged a connection between the two organizations and their respective areas of interest. The WOZQ student board worked with the Botanic Garden Student Educators (BoGSEs) and other members of the botanic garden team to design the event, set up speakers, and curate playlists inspired by each individual plant house.

Smith was one of the key coordinators of the event. They host the radio show “Dillon Loves to Dig,” which airs on Monday nights from 8-10 PM. “We had this vision for a while of having music in the botanic garden because I think that nature is a big inspiration for a lot of music,” said Smith. The event gave students the chance to come together, and connect the two things in new ways. “It's a really cool way to see the garden, which is just this awesome resource we have on campus, outside of its usual context and as a social gathering place…It inspires you to think outside of the ways that you would normally interact with these spaces,” Smith said. 

Chlo Gold ’25, the creative director of WOZQ and a former botanic garden student worker, agrees that the botanic garden is a great source of musical inspiration. When they worked there, they frequently spent their shifts listening to music.“The botanic garden, it’s such a creative space, we have so many people come in to do art and photography, and music is such a natural extension of that,” said Gold. The name for the event was inspired by their radio show, Botanical Boogie, which currently airs from 7-9 pm on Sundays. Each week they curate a playlist for a different botanical theme; they’ve hosted it their entire time at Smith. 

Last year, Gold was approached by Smith to assist in creating the prompts for the playlists, each inspired by their respective plant houses.  “I thought about how the spaces related to each other and also what would feel distinct for people moving through them. At base level, sure, all of these houses have many things in common, but walking through, it's clear that each of them has a very distinct vibe to it, and if we had just said [give us some songs] you could end up with something so much more homogenous,” they said. They started with the botanic garden’s descriptions for the houses and then drew on their own extensive experience to think of keywords that “would be a quick way for people to make connections.” For example, they described Succulent House as “...south facing with no obstructions, so it gets tons of light! It’s sunny, dry, and hot baby–like a desert!,” citing the themes of the house as being “open spaces, hot, dry, harsh, prickly, juicy, sunny, thirsty, tough, night owls, little guys.” These descriptions were then sent out to the other DJs as inspiration for the playlists, yielding song choices like “Wild Horses” by The Sundays. 

There was a lot to consider when it came to making this happen: for one thing, the garden is not set up to be a music venue. “The first time we did it we had a lot of hiccups with pulling together our technology because you need to find where the outlets are, different speakers for each room, devices to play all the music … we do a lot of communication with Sarah Loomis (associate director of education) and the BOGSEs because it's their space so we want to check with them along the way,” said Smith. They learned a lot from the first event and were able to fine tune it for this year. 

Another factor that had to be considered was the auditory proximity of each house. “We had to take into account that some of them are more permeable, so if you’re standing in palm you’re going to be able to hear things in warm temperate and stove house, and so just thinking about how those things came together,” said Gold. 

One thing that certainly flowed from house to house, however, was creativity. “As a WOZQ DJ, every week you’re making a playlist and that itself is an art form, it's something that you’re putting so much time and effort into and making so many concrete decisions about what goes with what … there was a lot of that same idea for the houses to have this sort of acrostic quality to them, like what does this evoke here and how can I connect that to music so that you’re igniting multiple senses at once,” said Gold. 

Students also engaged in another art form: collage. Many worked on pieces for Dirt, WOZQ’s annual zine which has been published by the station for several decades, against the backdrop of the bulb show installation by Congyue (Ella) Wang ’28. In the past, issues of Dirt have included interviews with renowned music artists such as Kurt Cobain and The Pixies, along with plenty of student artwork, playlists, and a variety of other related ephemera and musings. This year, the issue will include at least a few botanical collages courtesy of this event. Smith felt that the art making tied in well with the setting. “I feel like plants make their own art. To them it's not art, it's just the way that they are, but they are just these very beautiful things that evoke a lot of emotion,” they said. 

Attendees gave the event glowing reviews. Grace Harvey ’28 and Amara Singer ’28, two friends who enjoyed the chance to see the gardens at night, both said they felt rejuvenated after attending. Harvey is also a WOZQ DJ; Singer is not but frequently attends WOZQ events. Both said they visit the garden often. “I think any chance to bring more attention to the botanic gardens is really good, it’s really one of Smith's best features and I think not enough people on campus really utilize it,” said Singer. Harvey stated that the evening gave them a fresh perspective on the garden. “The different rooms have more character to me now, specifically Palm House [that was playing funk music]. I think from now on when I walk in there now it’ll start playing in my head. It’s all I’ll be able to think about, forever.”

Although the two organizations may not appear related at first sight, WOZQ and the botanic garden share similarities in their mission, and in their role on the Smith campus. Both strive to be resources for community building and creative expression. At the intersection of the two spaces, Botanic Boogie provided a great opportunity for students to engage with both in a new way. 

“What I like about plants is that there’s so many different ways that they are approaching life, in all these different shapes, adaptations and strategies, and music to me is similar in that there's so many ways you could go about making music. I feel like having them together in combination is a sensory delight–heaven, cool, paradise situation,” said Gold.