Garden festivals

I've recently been reading about garden festivals around the world, where designers and Landscape Architects come together to exhibit innovative design installations and landscape interventions that challenge the traditional and conventional expectations of garden design. The designs often blur the boundaries of landscape design and land art. In particular, I've been researching the Festival International des Jardins held at Chaumont sur Loire in France and the Jardin de Metis held at the Redford Gardens in Quebec. The photo above is from Claude Cormier's Blue Sticks installation at the Jardin de Metis in 2000.

In contrast, a visit to the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show on Friday was, like always, an extreme disappointment. The extremely limited number of designs on show (the number seems to diminish each year) were boring and were overshadowed by the growing crowd of retail focused stalls. The garden designs exhibited the same characteristics and features that appear year after year in residential design - the boring continuing obsession with 'outdoor rooms' (including outdoor fireplaces and bathtubs) and cubic frames that rise like malnourished pergolas from the landscapes below. As a city with a strong design culture, it is disheartening to see a broadening chasm opening up between the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show and the renowned international festivals.

Shouldn't this event be challenging people's perceptions of what gardens are and inspiring people through innovative and unique designs, instead of exhibiting the same stale formula year after year?

Forgive me if I'm ranting, but Melbourne deserves better.

Pop-up gardening

We have been noticing some pop-up gardening emerging on the streets of Melbourne recently - local communities have been cultivating veggie plots in some delightfully unexpected places within the city.

This example has appropriated part of the streetscape on the corner of King William and Napier Street in Fitzroy. The attached sign encourages people to plant and nurture the garden at will or simply sit by and enjoy its presence.

There are numerous examples of thriving community gardens in Melbourne's suburbs that we have all seen - in St Kilda, Clifton Hill, Collingwood, Brunswick etc. but this is the first example I have seen which has reclaimed actual road space. It has produced a valuable piece of landscape - a landscape which is pioneering the cultivation and 'greening' of the urban asphalt fabric of our city.

Photo and inspiration courtesy of Mark Skiba.

Paradise in Plasticine

In May 2009 James May embarked on the ambitious task of creating and exhibiting a garden entirely made of plasticine at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, the pinnacle annual event of English gardening. Luckily for me I was able to watch the whole process unfold from beginning to end as part of James May's Toy Stories program on SBS. Enlisting the help of many volunteers to create plasticine flowers and other components of the garden, the project gradually took shape to form a whimsical, fairy tale landscape. Predictably the Paradise in Plasticine garden caused a significant stir among the other exhibitors, judges and the public at Chelsea - this was particularly due to the lack of real plants! However, the garden had people enthralled, winning the RHS Peoples Choice award for 'Best Small Garden'.

Paradise in Plasticine had me spellbound with its child-like landscape filled with colour and joyous creativity. Sure, from a Landscape Architecture perspective the design of the garden didn't appear particularly well researched or developed, but it had me asking the question: what truly defines a garden as a garden? When does landscape become sculpture?

Photo taken from The Guardian.

Today is Friday.

So it's the end of the week, there is a long weekend on the horizon, and I have a design package due today. Whilst on the verge of destroying my computer, and hunting down the creator of vectorworks to have some stern words with how to create a better more functional program, I had to look for 'happy' things to keep me calm.

I came up with:

Now this lovely decked out bus shelter was designed by a Mark Reigelman, he has done lots of nifty little things with urban intervention that will put a smile on any grumpy face.

Check out an interview with him on Inside Out.

Also if you want to read a funny blog by a New Yorker about bikes click here, there was a rant about bike paths and the use of said bike paths for parking, by the local constabulary.

Design-orama - next AILA Fresh event

The next AILA Fresh event is going to be a good one including team-based design-tastic challenges! Come along and join in the design activities, meet other AILA Fresh people and generally have fun!