The 2010 Ellerslie Flower Show, New Zealand’s premier annual gardening event, opened to show nearly 100 horticultural exhibits with more than 30 display gardens. This year designers were seen framing their aesthetics by issues of sustainability, with materials brought from sustainable sources. The entries came with a message of preventing the wasteful use of natural resources.
A landscape architect student, Andy Ellis, and John Kamo displayed their work the gold award garden The Last Laugh, which is a composition of lawn, decking and pond that has been smacked into disarray by a large boulder and satellite rocks, representing Mother Earth fighting back against the human impact on the planet. Industrial and waste materials helped in creating something called the “0800 Pool Hire leisure complex.” Designed by Craig Pocock, the creation includes the shell of a freight container served as a stylish pavilion, with high-sided rubbish skips as brightly colored pools, the water circulating through gravel-filled smaller skips planted with bulrushes for chemical-free filtration.
Project Legit’s background graffiti-art sprayed recycled fence displayed the loss of school swimming pools and to attitudes to waste disposal. A portrayal of sustainable thinking was Carl Pickens’ Peace by Piece. The work threw light on ways to make the world a better place and volunteers transcribed these responses on to discarded glass bottles. The bottles were place into high curved wooden walls defining a flower-shaped garden with an overflowing bowl of Oamaru quartz at its heart. Demonstrating that practical use does not have to sacrifice beauty or usability of the outdoors, a number of gardens were based on edible plants. The show truly was magical.
Via: The Southland Times