Overview
Groups of four to five people formed organically through interest and some at random. Each group was given a pre-prepared raised bed and asked to plant a political systems – existing, past or a new system. After an hour of debate and some regrouping, six garden plots were planted.
Landescapism
By Hillary, Alessandro and John
Post-Communism is a name sometimes given to the period of political and economic transformation or “transition” in former Communist states located in parts of Europe and Asia, in which new governments aimed to create free market-oriented capitalist economies with some form of parliamentary democracy.
Planting Plan
We started with a crowded, degraded bit of land (system). Some plants escape by knocking down the walls of oppression and heading for what they hope will be greener pastures, towards a new system.
Plants:
Brassicas: co-opted regime beneficiaries, lacking imagination
Radicchio: formerly oppressed workers
Sweetcorn: sweet talkers, politicians and bureaucrats
Nasturtium: formerly oppressed students
Fennel: heroic citizen spearheading the revolution
Lavender: promised land, beckoning them from a distance
Soil Assembly
By Rebecca Beinart and Alice Gale-Feeny
Anarchy is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society (without the implications of disorder).
Key to soils:
1. Garden of Remembrance
2. Admin director’s office
3. Wild area at car park
4. Corner of Cricket field
5. Innovation centre
6. Manure pile by Bowling green
7. Dumped clay from test ground
8. Fountain water
9. Business and economics
Planting Plan
An anarchic garden is not managed or gardened, it is left to its own devices and flowers and weeds are left to grow.
Soil samples are collected from different locations of the campus and arranged in a grid within one plot. The soils are left as found without any extra watering or other support, so that plants would sprout by chance and their own rules.
Plants: any that will settle and grow.
Territorial Dispute
By Daniel Bower and Heather Knight
Imperialism:
The creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination. Imperialism has been described as a primarily western concept that employs expansionist – mercantilist and latterly communist – systems. The term imperialism should not be confused with ‘colonialism’ as it often is. Edward Said suggests that imperialism involved “the practice, the theory and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory’”. He goes on to say colonialism refers to the “implanting of settlements on a distant territory”.
Planting Plan
This plot symbolises the conflicts raised by access to resources and the resulting forms of invasion and global vs local dispute.
Imported soil and plants are creating the basis of this plot. The highly aggressive spreaders might leap over and conquer the neighbouring plots, particularly the Soil Assembly system as a corridor connects the two. Foxglove forms the head of state, while grasses function as rampant invaders. Also strawberries and spider plants help increase populations, spreading to nearby plots. Climbing beans take over higher levels of air space.
Mt. Archy
By Ruth and Graham
Monarchy is a form of government in which all political power is absolutely or nominally lodged with an individual. As a political entity, the monarch is the head of state, generally until their death or abdication, and “is wholly set apart from all other members of the state.
Planting Plan:
A spiral with purple colored chives and sage at the top represent royal rulers. Other small plants like thyme have a hard time overcoming the long spiral path to reach the top. The ladies mantle brings in gender issues at the base of the spiral. Climbing beans bridge over to the top, eventually overgrowing everything.
However, Mt. Archy soon was conquered by black flies, annihilating the system.
Marigold Alliance
By Stephen Laws and Paul Conneally
Health and Efficiency
An open relationship between the functional edible and ornamental.
Planting Plan:
Trailing beans, strawberries, fennel, purple sage, thyme, poppies, oregano, sunflowers, lavender and day lillies.
Feudalism
By Richard Jones
Feudalism is a political and military system between a feudal aristocracy (a lord), and his vassals. In its most classic sense, feudalism refers to the Medieval European political system composed of a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs.
Planting Plan:
In this scheme manure both binds – the circle – and dominates – the shaft. The power of kings, the basis of the western medieval economiy is all founded on manure.
Key to Design
1. Outer circle = three orders of 1. medieval society, reciprocity and duties of care
2. Helix – great chain of being an 2. unbroken chain from the least significant to the greatest
3 The ropes – forming the 3. pyramid representing feudal hierarchy and inequalty. Elite plants: ginger, figs/ raisins, clove, peopper, saffron, cinnamon, mace Plants: ideally wheat, barley and oats. For the plot climbing beans were used.
Scholarship
By Raffaella, Pawas, Daniel, John and family
The scholarship garden bed takes the shape of a ship. In the formative years at a university scholars not only grow their knowledge but also as a person. Hopefully at the end of their tenure at university they will have grown enough to tackle the stormy waters of the larger world, safely sailing into their future.
Planting Plan:
1. Plant any kind of edible food that grows in local climate.
2. Water and hold readings to plants and people regularly, such as novels by Jules Verne, discourses by Slavoj Žižek and poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
3. Harvest and spread fruit.
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