|
This
garden shows how sustainable Bangladeshi tropical vegetable
gardening adapts tenaciously to London allotments within
ramshackle enclosures. To create a high quality design, Jeff
Travers has formalised the garden into a small cubic
parterre (a microcosm of Potager du Roi at Versailles - Wren's
inspiration). Strange plants and curiosities parody the
formal indulgence of Western gardening culture, and
Laugier's iconic hut becomes a 'dooghie-house'. The garden
consists of recycled structures for beans and gourds around
a herb lawn edged in amaranth (dooghie) and coriander, to
Laugier's formal principles. Though cheerful from the
outside, within it is sombre, with funereal white-flowered
gourds and dark beans symbolising Bangladesh's increasing
floods and England's allotments lost to unproductive
municipal landscaping. Only sunflowers conjure hope. |
