Diamonds and Rust

Designed by

Tony Smith

Built by

Hortus Infinitus

Web

www.hortusinfinitus.co.uk

Diamonds and Rust is a conceptual garden concerned with human perceptions of time, from the apparent permanence of geological features to the transience of human structures and industry. The garden contrasts the relative time scales of geological time, ancient human history and our industrial age. The diamonds of the title represent geology and rust the rapid decay of human endeavour. It is not intended to be a practical garden but a thought-provoking, ephemeral, horticultural installation.

The garden has two earthwork structures, one shaped like the base of a pyramid overlaid with the second, a landscape of rolling hills. These suggest the relatively short duration of human structures and civilization compared to the vast, and perhaps incomprehensible, enormity of geological time. Artificial grass tubes of differing lengths are arranged to suggest an industrial installation, with smoke rising from the topmost blackened chimneys. Artificial grass has been used because it is itself a product of an industrial process.