The miNiATURE garden show, which ran for three days last week in The Strand Gallery, near Charing Cross Station, invited ten of the world's top garden designers to go mad.
The opportunity to create scale-models, along and the freedom afforded by the new 3D printing technology, aimed to release them from the constraints of health and safety, budgets, planting seasons, and materials and allow them to experiment and explore - and the rest of us to see what, unfettered, the cream of the profession would come up with.
I have to say, it was great fun. I'm always entranced by a miniature world, especially as here the models were not behind glass, but could be bent over, closely scrutinised, and regarded from "ground" view. As one did the latter on one's knees, it possibly looked like worship at the altar of Hortus, but what the heck?
Here's the first instalment of what we got to see:
Haute Couture, by Sarah Eberle. An outside courtyard, associated with a fashion house, with a catwalk, allowing both relaxation and photographic opportunities. Vibrant planting for summer. The tall funnels function as raincatchers for an irrigation system. It also shows the hazards of working with small plastic models. I'd have put my fat fingers in and righted it, but for the fear of knocking everything else over.
Stage, by Jo Thompson. Inspired by Baroque art and architecture, this swirls around a central stage and viewpoint. The spiral stairs are just the sort of thing that 3D printing makes so much easier than traditional modelling. And there was real feel of colour and motion because of the spiralling out of the beds from the central point (not easy to photograph, though).
Vertigo, by Jamie Dunstan. A garden to complement a lakeside holiday home. The garden is suspended over the water, with a futuristic feel of multiple levels, a shady dining area below, herb, veg garden and greenhouse above (surely too hot! Oh, but I forgot: no contraints), with seating and entertaining area.
A letter posted one million years ago, by Jihae Hwang. Inspired by the island of Dokdo, which might disappear any moment or regenerate itself, the wave forms surrounding it are a metaphor for the meaning of life. It was unfortunate that the blob representing the island looked mostly like something a passing animal might have - er - passed, and there's no specific viewpoint, making this so tough to photograph that I pretty much gave up.
A World in 21st Century Stone, by Adam Frost. Inspired by poured concrete and brutalist architecture, it's a community space to be enjoyed by all ages (there are pools to paddle in below, and a fire to gather round on top of the building) and also acts as a wildlife corridor in an urban environment. Concrete classicism, I'd say, in every sense.
So, that's half the show. It was much kinder to the feet than Chelsea and Hampton Court! I'll put the rest of the gardens up in the next (coming soon) post.
How well do you think the show's fulfilling its intention so far?
...Landscape Juice Network
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