Like distressing feelings and conversations, this is a garden you can’t ignore. ![]() “Plants and garden settings can be places of hope for people in their most distressed time.” “In our struggle in life, there are moments of absolute bliss when suddenly life, in its pain, is revealed as being so precious.” He cites people living in war-torn parts of the world who take solace from seeing flowers blooming amongst the rubble and destruction. View image in fullscreen I was interested in doing something that was harder, more authentic, something that dealt with conflict or struggle.” The Samaritans’ Listening Garden at Chelsea.Įxperiences of pain and suffering can transform how you perceive beauty in nature and encourage you to relish the joy in your life. “I was interested in doing something that was harder, more authentic, something that dealt with conflict or struggle.” So many gardens at Chelsea are designed to be tranquil, comfortable spaces. “So if you’ve experienced loneliness, loss, self-loathing – what does that look like?” “A lot of what we do in gardens is reflective of good times, and feeling content and happy and at peace,” he says. Hawkes wanted to install a garden at Chelsea that would act as a polemic against the perfectly curated, manicured beauty of other designs. “There’s this feeling of, ‘Is everything closing in on me? Is the ground opening up underneath me? What lies beneath?’” “We can’t see the water, we only hear this crazy turmoil.” Further ahead, a sculpture that looks like a “swirling vortex” of more than 3,000 recycled nails appears to fly out of the ruptured ground, creating a sense of foreboding or even menace. There is only one way to escape: down a path cracked with deep fissures where the sound of gushing water can be heard. “It’s the sort of colour you fall into, that draws you in, rather than reaching out to you.” Unfamiliar, spiny, spiky, thorny plants – including the prickly, towering shape of Aralia chapaensis, a rare shrub – and lots of dark russet foliage crowd the visitor. At the entrance, slabs of reinforced concrete, shaped into brutal, frightening forms by Hawkes’s own hands, hang “uncomfortably low” from thin nylon wires. The idea for the garden – or at least, the feelings the garden would evoke – came to him like the fragments of a dream, and the space is intended to have an otherworldly, even nightmarish quality. Depression gave me a fire in my belly that I drew on every day Darren Hawkes
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