Ford's Word Garden

Site-Responsive, Installation

Ford’s Word Garden is a site-specific installation composed of small rounded plaques, each inscribed with different quotes by landscape designer Gordon Ford on his gardens and gardening. The plaques are randomly placed around the Ford-designed garden at the Birrarung house. They are copper patina’d, a process which will continue to transform over time.

Ford’s design philosophy comprised of garden making that gave attention to the location itself. A site-specific landscaper, elements such as rocks, native plants and water are contrived in what has come to be known as “Natural Australian Style”. 

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The idea for this work developed during my Shire of Nillumbik artist’s residency at Birrarung, Laughing Waters Rd. At the beginning of my residency I observed the Ford-designed garden wrapped around the architecture: a smattering of shrubberies, a series interconnected ponds, a large wall of rocks at least 5 metres high. It looked quite different to my memory of it from almost 20 years earlier, when I had lived on the property. Once a lively waterfall cascaded down the rock wall into the first pond and fed the other three ponds. Today, ponds no longer run into each other. The rocks, some mottled green with mosses and lichens, are no longer framed by an entanglement of plants pouring forth from every crack and crevice. Now they appear somewhat lonely in their togetherness.

Ford himself once stated “Unless appropriate caretaking of a designed landscape takes place, it is inevitable that the original concept for the garden will at best deteriorate, at worst be lost.” The Birrarung garden had become a ruin of recent history. However, embedded in the great wall of rocks, structured with evident grandeur, were remnants of the ethics and aesthetics of Ford. I looked to Ford’s writing in Gordon Ford: The Natural Australian Garden. In it he describes his approach to garden making, his inspirations and philosophy. It was then I decided to literally plant his words, in the form of plaques dotted throughout his garden. This site-specific installation enables Ford’s Birrarung garden to endure in a new context, so that despite its physical deterioration, it’s concept may still be found and enjoyed.