Sundials have held my attention since architecture school 40 years ago. Over my long period of contemplation and experimentation, it became clear that the typical garden sundial has not, over the last millenia, escaped its singular focus on telling civil time—the time of clocks and agreements.

Named for flowers that turn toward the sun, my four new sundials—the Hathajori, Buttercup, Tulip, and Mimosa—are called Heliotropes. The Heliotropes do not prioritize civil time. Instead, they keep time the way living plants do, by following light, monitoring soil and climate, and responding to environmental change. They abide by plant time.

With patience, the Heliotropes may offer the engaged observer—briefly—a temporal portal through which one can step out of civil time, stand where one is, and begin to see more deeply and listen more attentively to plant time.