True Dirt

of what does the garden dream?: Hadspen Parabola redux

Back in September I entered a garden design to the Hadspen Parabola competition, and eventually was notified that my idea had made it to the second round of judging. Here, at last, are the finalists - as best as I could represent them from the pdf files and assorted documents now posted at the site.

The entries varied from a typewritten page describing a redwood tree to an open source "wiki" that allowed anyone to design the garden. I was pleased to see that one finalist envisioned a grotto excavated into the garden slope, and intrigued by the entry proposing a "night garden" which few would visit since it would be open only after dark. It was nice to run across one entry that simple described a fruit and vegetable garden - with a prominent display of compost piles.

The vocabulary of the design ideas sometimes startled me: a wandering "flaneur", functional form versus "desuetude", and the inevitable "exclosed disciplines" (sounding vaguely Foucault-ian). If you think garden design is a relatively straightforward affair involving scale drawings and a plant list, consider how the old kitchen garden at Hadspen has been re-imagined by these dreamers - a giant beehive might be just the thing for your next garden...

The Hadspen Parabola by Anouk Vogel, Johan Selbing, Eva Radinova (Netherlands)

The concept is for a gradient planting scheme dictated by the amount of sunlight and moisture in each "microclimate" of the hillside...."Instead of putting supposedly natural forms against artificial forms, the garden is a man-made "texture" that forms a gradient and that amplifies existing natural conditions, and present the parabola, with the surrounding wall, as an object or a "brand".

The new Hadspen Parabola Garden by Ethel Rae Perkins (Germany):

A simple plan that keeps getting more complicated....

"It should be kept very simple with the "patches" [refering to the diamond patches created by the expanding grid pathways] covered in a rhythm to be determined with stone, wood, grass, with a solitary ornamental tree, some superb sculture at focal points and water, still and running....Lighting for events after dark....more room for art....potting shed converted into a theatre or concert venue....and no nursery."

The Hadspen spirit, put back into the garden by Andy Atkinson (UK):

"...space inside the parabola is not just defined by the verticality and surface of the perimeter wall but also by its perspective, its parallax movement, enjoined with it on the land plane - where feet are placed....a long, gentle, straight stair....planting informed by the garden's water movement....referencing exclosed disciplines (e.g. fashion/costumes)....vegetables giving historic reference and realism. Identity created."

ok. what?

the night garden by Lucy Carter, Robert Carter, Francette Pacteau (UK):

"Not a garden of colours, nor a vegetable garden, our garden is neither colourful nor useful. Open only from dusk to dawn, it offers a monochromatic setting within which scents and sounds guide the visitor inviting him to relinquish clarity and explicitness in favour of imagining.... Plants are selected for their scent and pale colour.

This garden will not bear the presence of many. But on occasion the night garden becomes the setting for recitals and performances. Shepherd's steps furnish a modest amphitheatre. A raised island provides a stage for such intimate events when is does not offer itself as a repose for the visitor."

Make Space Not Thing by Teresa Koo (Australia):

"This entry proposes that the variety and beauty of spaces created between plants - their spatiality and texture - to move within and among, takes precedence over the beauty of plants as objects to be viewed....the Hadspen walled garden and its surrounds [will] be planted with a morphing grid of trees and tall shrubs. "

A Cultivated Grotto by Patrick Lynch, Naomi Shaw, Michael Gollings, Pete Yothed (UK):

"We propose to dig a hole and to plant a cider orchard or a vineyard. Every proper garden needs a grotto, since it is there that the earth & the sky, and their respective divinities meet. The true purpose of a garden is to reveal the cosmic scale of time, to embody this and to make it spatial so that we can actually see, hear and smell the world anew. Theatres & gardens share this cosmic dimension, they both reveal the drama of nature and the ruination of human time. A grotto recreates the birth of the union of the natural world & representation, in space. Whilst a vineyard enables the reunion of pleasure and agriculture, what is correctly referred to, by Petrarch and Pliny, as cultivation, in all senses of the word. "

The Hadspen Hive by Pierre Belanger (Canada):
a garden basically for the bees, the parabola has been cleverly placed on end and reimagined as a hive; and incorporates the old British practice of hive tending using walls of "bee boles" ...."Hives are distributed across a hyper-functional field of crops such as clover, buckwheat, lucerne, raspberry, lavender and mint. Crop width and configuration are determined by the modular size of the hives to distinguish different species, to maximize solar exposure, to avoid extreme temperature gradients and thermally insulate the hives. Wrapping around the field is the existing brick wall, dotted with recesses for vernacular bee boles on the inside and for storing beekeeping equipment (suits, nets, smokers, tools) on the outside."


NEW GARDEN INSIDE THE PARABOLA by Charles Dowding (UK):

"My aim is to show how one can create a garden that is both beautiful and productive, of many different fruits and vegetables....harvesting of leaves, pods and roots, for sale or use on site....The garden walls....apricots and asian pears pruned in different ways to display various options in training and cropping....a mixture of herbaceous plants and annual flowers, leaving a bare area, mulched and composted, around the base of each fruit tree....an ornamental fruit cage, perhaps over one of the large central beds, in which many currants and berries could be appreciated from the four pathways....careful and consistent fertility building of the beds, using both bought and home-made compost....A range of compost heaps would be established outside the garden, as close as possible, to be part of the garden's appeal and interest."

Some basic facts about the Sequoia Giganteum (Nowhere in the world does the Sequoia Giganteum grow in pure stands) by Jessie LeBaron, Mac Carbonell (USA):

"Proposal: To plant and grow within the walls of the Hadspen Parabola Garden the only living forest grove of Sequoia Giganteum started from seedlings..... The brick wall, like a Petri dish, offers space for a new experiment; another century's interpretation on the design of observation."

Open Source Space by Anne Stevenson, Bridget Snaith (UK):

"A visual wiki interface will be created on line to allow multiple authors to manipulate a virtual model of the garden. A horticultural advisor will develop a base palette of site-appropriate plant materials, on which others can provide commentary....A garden is by its nature a continually adapting system. The open source space concept reflects this reality and provides a parallel design process to match it."

(no title, no text) by Jean Martin (France):


The Parabola provides a frame for a real time painting by Sarah Price (UK):

"Suggestive of patterns of misaligned print or of shadows shrinking & growing, planting
playfully self-seeds & spreads. Sketching successive moments never to be repeated,
this transient composition evades a maintained, predetermined 'gardened' state.
Framed within a rhythm of pathways, sequential drifts of 'theme plants' such as
ornamental grasses provide visual & structural continuity. Evoking romantic associations of 'natural' plant communities, this stylised meadow extends its seasonal vocabulary with a blended palette of native & non-native perennials, biennials & annuals. A running section of tonal planting appears to 'shadow' the curve of the Parabola wall, creating a defined backdrop to cascading rhythms of more complex, intermingled planting textures & associations."

A Sunken Wall by Lucy Carter, Robert Carter, Francette Pacteau (UK):

"We propose to lower part of the garden wall into the ground so that the top of the
wall does not project above ground level....The part of the wall remaining above ground functions to reinforce this perception of a ruinous condition, as it stands, the survivor of the catastrophe that caused the rest of the wall to 'fall' or 'sink'. It speaks of a 'before' the event....situated between function, the form of function and desuetude- aims to symbolically inscribe within the design of the garden its history as a functional garden as well as the catastrophe that is its recent destruction....As one enters through the remaining gate, the garden thus announced vanishes as one comes into an almost imperceptibly defined expanse of tall grasses that espouse the forms of the land."

We are imagining a secret garden by Justine Miething, Gerwin Gruber (France): .

"Aligned trees are planted densely along the existing levelling . According to the door the visitor chose to enter the garden, he discovers different ....sceneries: Coming from the south from the beginning of the slope he sees a small wood with various clearings.
It is like entering the scene of a theatre-stage. Coming from the north he discovers a garden with various flowers and dense tree plantations. Coming from east or west he experience aligned trees with a lawn path and benches to sit. For the one who has less the soul of a flaneur criss-crossing is allowed in between the lines of trees and planting....We are thinking of small willows for the tree plantations. Some areas under the trees are covered with wildflowers and groundcover plants. The major part is planted with lawn. Only the path along the wall is in lava stone or mulch (shredded tree trunks). "

Initital Response by Jantiene T Klein, Roseboom van der Veer (UK):

"Landscapes and the gardens within them should be designed to enclose nothing less but the entire universe....the paths are simplified and the perimeter is now empty....the islands within the parabola are ever so slightly revised and re-ordered according to phyllotaxis patterns....on a subconscious level, most will instantly recognize and intuitively respond to the rhythm of a natural form developed over millions of years....The pond inside the wall does not belong....The parabola itself is to become the ordered world, and the straight wall enclosing it....representing the invitation to explore the existence of unspoken infinitudes that exist outside the known boundaries....Standing guard where the ordered and unordered meet is the Obelisk, in a new position."

[In case you didn't know (I didn't) "phyllotaxis" is the botanical term for the arrangement of leaves on the stem of a plant.]