MIFGS 2023: Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show

Client: MIFGS

Year: 2023

Show Garden Title: Alone, Together.

Overview: In collaboration with Beyond Blue, our garden will explore the increasing health and wellness concerns resulting from loneliness and social isolation.

Using national parks and gardens as a vehicle for education and connection, our garden looks to promote a sense of belonging, to open dialogue surrounding loneliness, and to promote further research and opportunities in designing for health and wellness.

During COVID, many people could not access open space, parklands of scale or national parks. Through this period of social isolation we saw significant increase in loneliness and associated health concerns. We invite people into our garden to reconnect and rediscover the many shared values through plants and landscape materials, the shared moments that bring memory and a yearning to re-visit our national parks.

The Great Otway National Park is our palette, its scale and magnitude providing a canvas that is awe inspiring and connected globally. In our design we also present a contrasting landscape and introduced planting design of early settlement whereby memory and connection was forged in this sublime landscape. A Hydrangea set in contrast to a Messmate forest, protected by a large Dicksonia frond.

National Parks have always provided a scale that celebrates a level of social isolation, yet visiting national parks presents great opportunity for social connections. To be alone, together in this landscape is what our show garden represents. We look to bring a garden that brings memory and connection through plants. A garden to entice people to connect through revisiting national parks, and a garden that promotes discussion on health and wellness benefits of national parks.