BIO.

Gardening, Not Architecture is an “electronic-tinged ethereal powerpop” project started by Sarah Saturday in Wisconsin in 2003 toward the end of her former pop-punk band Saving Face, right before she moved to Los Angeles to take a job working for Kevin Lyman (founder of the Vans Warped Tour) in 2004. The project was intended to be online-only, with the release of a handful of demos on a Purevolume page (originally under the name “We The Living”) in 2005, and followed by the release of “The First EP” for free on gardeningnotarchitecture.com in 2007. Sarah had no plans for touring, as she was working full time on the business side of music in Los Angeles at the time. But when the music began to spread online, requests poured in from new fans all over the country for a Gardening, Not Architecture tour.

After completing a self-booked solo west coast tour in early 2009, Sarah finished writing material for a full-length album and recorded “First LP” with engineer/producer Beau Sorenson at Chris Walla’s Alberta Court studios in May 2009. In support of the new album, and in an effort to launch the project nationwide, Sarah completed a 65+ day self-booked Gardening, Not Architecture U.S. tour at the end of 2009. In 2010, Sarah made G,NA her primary focus, moving into a storage space and getting a PO box in Los Angeles to tour full-time. This correlated with her decision to shut down her company (The Weekend Group) and launch her music resource not-for-profit website Earnityourself.com nationwide, as well. She completed a Canadian tour in the spring of 2010, followed by the entire Vans Warped Tour in the summer of 2010, and finished the year with a 60-day North American tour.

From the beginning, Sarah has concentrated on handmade and limited edition items for Gardening, Not Architecture’s merchandise collection. “The First EP” was released in a limited run of 49 CDs, which came in hand-sewn paper sleeves and were each numbered and signed. For the west coast tours and the handful of May shows she played in 2009, Sarah made altered versions of the EP paper sleeves. For the first pressing of “First LP”, Sarah made 500 screenprinted cloth canvas sleeves that she hand-sewed at shows. At nearly every show to-date, Sarah has worn a hand-stenciled shirt bearing the Gardening, Not Architecture name, which came to be the unofficial band logo. She now offers these hand-stenciled logo shirts through her online merchandise store. Sarah has run a few fundraisers through her website to help with the cost of recording and touring, offering limited edition posters, paintings, handmade postcards, tee shirts, and other items in exchange for donations. To top it all off, Sarah built an LED “light wall” to accompany her performance on stage, made of shower curtains and duct tape, which is programmed with light sequences for each song.

The buzz surrounding Gardening, Not Architecture has grown organically since day one, as was intended for this project, and fans have fallen in love with the music and the honesty behind the project. As the name suggests, this is a project that will flourish in its own time, in a natural progression.