Text by: Erin Despard -- May 25, 2010
What does it mean to think of a garden as a medium, or form of media? This is the question I have spent the last four months investigating, as a visiting researcher at the Berkeley Center for New Media, and for which I have found much inspiration at the Blake Garden, especially in conversation with the people working there. One thing it is interesting to observe in relation to this premise, is the way different media forms tend to interact, and how this interaction may change the way both are used. Thus, while I would argue that the garden itself—the way it is laid out, the content and style of its planting, the degree of its maintenance and so on—has a mediating power, particularly in relation to what people notice or understand about the local environment, it is also true that there are other forms of media at work in the garden. One form of media which most public gardens contain (sometimes very prominently) are signs which present information to visitors in the form of maps, historical narrative, botanical nomenclature and so on. All this serves to mediate, or influence, the kinds of experience visitors are likely to have in the garden. While such ‘mediation’ of the garden experience can be enriching and educational for visitors, and may even be expected in some contexts (such as botanical gardens), what has fascinated me about the Blake Garden is the relatively modest number of signs and labels. From my perspective, this has the effect of bringing more subtle, non-verbal forms of mediation more strongly into operation. Such mediation is necessarily more open-ended in its effects, creating outcomes which have more to do with provocation and inspiration than education. In other words, a visit to the Blake Garden raises questions rather than providing access to information. That said, the answers to those questions are often easily discovered—for example by speaking with one of the many friendly people working in the garden, or by visiting the garden website. More interesting, however, from my perspective, is how such questions may, before they are answered, encourage exploration and a closer attention to the garden and its inhabitants, as well as the unique characteristics of its environment. This is in my opinion precisely the kind of activity which is desirable in a garden whose mission involves the development and promotion of ecological landscape design practices. I have therefore found the Blake Garden to be an interesting site for exploring more subtle forms of mediation, forms which are perhaps also present in other gardens, but are less obvious or clear in their intention. I present here just one example of a feature in the Blake Garden that has a strong mediating effect, but whose effects are more subtle and open-ended, and therefore, I think, encouraging of a more active engagement with the garden. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="240" caption="Photo: Erin Despard"]