Boustrophedon: Alternating right to left and left to right – the pattern of oxen tilling the land, or of an ancient form of writing.
Boustrophedon Garden was one of 11 Ephemeral Gardens made for Québec City’s year-long 400th anniversary festival in 2008. This garden wove together ideas from Québec’s regional long-lot planting system and Samuel de Champlain’s early agricultural experimentation and recordings, which were performed to ensure the survival of early French colonizers in Canada. Boustrophedon Garden created a three-dimensional landscape “cloth” that registered growth and change in its warp and weft. It was conceived as a life-size graph that enabled visitors to scrutinize changing patterns of growth and bloom recorded over the summer. The site’s length was an axis of time with an embedded wood calendar marking the duration of the garden festival in weekly increments. Rows of different vegetables and herbs ran the length of the garden, each with a corresponding set of overhead ropes. Each week, plant height measurements and a photograph of the garden were taken and permanently recorded on the three-dimensional garden calendar. Overhead lines were pulled down and weighted to mark significant life cycle events such as bloom and harvest time, making a three-dimensional graph. Much like a gardener’s journal, observations were gathered in anticipation of improving next year’s garden. Increasing in complexity and volume throughout the summer, recorded data and vegetation proceeded to engulf the visitor, while creating a dialogue with the plants that continued to change during their growth trajectory. As the plants died back and the fruit and vegetables were harvested, the life-size calendar remained as a garden journal. Boustrophedon Garden made a playful connection between food production, the dynamism of plant processes, and the careful science of understanding growth necessary to our future survival. The gardens were open until the end of September 2008.
Boustrophedon Gardenhas been awarded a DX Best of Category Award, a Canadian Interiors Best of Canada Award, an ID Magazine Award, and a CSLA Regional Award of Merit.
