Oak Ring and Leaf / Les Jardin Des Chenes / International Garden Festival / Chaumant Sur Loire / France

Commissioned by Nicola Hills Garden Design / 2022

The garden is inspired by a poem by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris in their award-winning book The Lost Spells, and is a response to a field of international research that has found that oak trees adapt quickly to climate change in the Anthropocene, showing themselves to be the very embodiment of resilience.

The garden shows just how powerful and resistant the oak is. In parallel to preservation of evolution in order to combat climate change, it serves to illustrate what helps us, as human beings, to find resilience. It also expresses the oak’s importance for the environment and biodiversity. The mosaic of pebbles in the heart of the garden represents the tree’s age rings. It encircles a pile of acorns carved in this long-lasting species – a treasure reached along a path that is also spiral, lined with oak trees at various stages in their growth, accompanied by wild grasses and bulbs. Master of resilience, the oak can be regarded as the tree of the future.

Text taken from the International Garden Festival website