“Its always best to start at the beginning”
– Glinda the Good Witch of the South
“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written in 1899, two Centuries ago, by L.Frank Baum. In 1939, Warner Brothers immortalised Baum’s book.(Thus it’s in the public domain and has recently come out of copywrite). This Garden is our homage, a magical interpretation which invites the public to follow the yellow brick road, re-creating Dorothy and friends enchanting quest from the Kansas prairie, over the rainbow, through munchkin land, via the cornfield crossroads, into the old dark forest, by drowsy poppy fields and on to the enticing vista of Emerald city and beyond.
A multi-layered re imaging, combining unusual landscaping and ambitious planting, it will be a nostalgic walk through for adults and fun for kids. Yet its purpose is also to be a satire on modern Irish society – there’s no place like home – with morals, sacred geometry and esoteric symbolism. Plus its a convenient setting in which to subtly display the sponsors super-duper grass.
All of the above was taken directly from our concept garden description as submitted last October. Like Dorothy, it’s been a long and sometimes fraught journey to today when we have at last started to build the garden. It’s something of a relief to have it underway. Only 17 working days until judging and 18 days, more importantly, until its open to the public and their verdict.
Around about now, many (Bloom) Garden build blogs might well peter out. It certainly happened me whilst the Alice in Wonderland Sanctuary Synthetic Garden got underway – see www.bloomwonderlandgarden.com. Not this time however, no siree. I’m treating this as a semi-public (After all, hardly anyone will ever read this) self-therapy program. If I write about stuff maybe I won’t dream about it so much.
Today we mostly marked out the ground – the golden spiral yellow brick pathway based on sacred geometry (more on this later), the Kansas cabins position – will we get away with a second hand barna shed? – The twister – hopefully on its way from the artist Lucy Stracken from down the road in Stonehedge in the UK and all the other nooks and crannies. In fairness it did transfer successfully from the plans to the ground. Now it remains to be seen if they make sense in three dimensions. Fingers crossed. Professor Marvel never guessed, he knew!
