2025 Melbourne Flower and Garden Show- The New Nature

Boutique Gardens

Codesigned with Alistair Kirkpatrick and Michael Rochelle

We humans are masterful engineers of our environment. Many animal and plant species now either prefer or depend on the conditions that have emerged alongside our urbanisation, muddying the distinction between ‘us, here’, and ‘nature, there’. We are the only species to have truly and irreversibly changed this planet - what is ‘natural’ is now surely enmeshed with the ‘unnatural’ that we have built or discarded, and we should “consider ourselves part of nature rather than always on the outside.” (Tim Low).

By considering the amazing power of plants to clean and restore the environment through phytoremediation and hyperaccumulation, The New Nature asks you to look at polluted sites with fresh eyes and a feeling of optimism. We do not need to lament what is lost - rather look to a world where humans work with plants to create a truly

sustainable future.

These ideas have been embodied and expressed in our garden through the Japanese

principle of wabi-sabi, which asks you to appreciate the beauty of transience and imperfection; and the practice of kintsugi, which vignettes broken ceramics with golden seams, challenging you to honour the history of an object and place value on that which has healed.

Our hope is that those visiting our garden might reconsider their notions of what is beautiful, and perhaps even what defines a garden. Let us all recalibrate our perceptions and embrace living in our New Nature.