Origin of the Project

Taking the long view I can trace the origin of this project back to working in my Grans garden as a child, where I became fascinated by plants and flowers and her care for them, watering, taking cuttings, staking  and setting up wires for them to grow along. Most of all I remember how one  year I watched her dig a hole next to her Hydrangea plant into which she buried a handful of copper nails, her explanation bemused me at the time as she told me it was the nails that made the flowers turn blue.

Anything as crazy stays in your head and has to be worth investigating and now I find myself immersed in trying to understand the origins of different species of plants and the hybridization of them both natural and cultivated.

Selection - deconstruction

The vast array of donated and found materials have now been sifted through and interesting components with potential for the plant selected out and sorted out into piles and boxes of similar objects. Metal& plastic tubes, wheels, grommets, springs hoses, unidentifiable moldings etc

Objects where deconstructed to reclaim special elements such as the 1980’s spiral pram wheels, so suggestive of  the heads of sunflowers.

A hot air balloon inflation fan....

Putting Roots Down - base structure

Meantime I took a couple of scaffolding poles I had from a previous piece of work along with wheels and a handle I had purchased as part of a garden trolley and visited a colleague John Rutherford. We worked together for the day to fabricate the base structure from which the plant will grow. The wheels will eventually enable me to smoothly pull the plant on its journey to the Chelsea Flower Show.

Caution: Heavy Plant in the Making

The story so far I am constructing a mobile plant in my studio, to take to London having been invited by the Chelsea Fringe Festival director to take part in the festival, back in October.

Throughout March I put calls out to all my friends and neighbours for a wide selection of objects and materials. The response has been amazing as you will see below.