A secret garden in a hidden corner.
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Exhibitions
Fern Folly: Elspeth Diederix
Especially for this corner of Agnietenstraat, which hardly gets any sun, Elspeth Diederix created a shade garden with a folly.
Artist's design sketch
A folly is a structure with no practical purpose, a decorative whim of a (landscape) architect.
Sometimes overgrown and often designed as a ruin from the outset, the folly is a symbol of transience.
You often see them in 18th- and 19th-century English and French landscape gardens.
Folly in Brodsworth Hall garden
For Elspeth Diederix, Las Pozas was also a source of inspiration, a vast sculpture garden filled with follies near Xilitla, Mexico.
Edward James, a prominent collector of Surrealist art, designed Las Pozas between 1949 and 1984.
Diederix’s folly is a staircase that disappears beneath thick roots, like a portal to a parallel world. She made the staircase and the plant roots from ceramic.
Ceramic is clay fired at a very high temperature, often coated with glaze for protection, which also adds color and shine.
The garden has long been a source of inspiration for Diederix, who is also a landscape gardener.
This is how she created her own Miracle Garden, a public garden in Erasmuspark in Amsterdam.
She photographs the flowers growing in her garden in such a way that they take on a magical quality. As if they were tiny miracles.
Hence the name Miracle Garden.
Elspeth Diederix, Miracle Garden, 2021
Elspeth Diederix, Miracle2 #01, 2021
Drawing on her expertise as a landscape gardener, Diederix chose plants for this corner that thrive in damp, shady conditions, particularly ferns.
Here you’ll find, among other plants, hart’s-tongue fern, kidney fern, horseshoe fern, mock cucumber, European wild ginger and Solomon’s seal.
Fern Folly. Centraal Museum Utrecht / photo Robert Oosterbroek
Elspeth Diederix’s little garden with steps forms an incidental but beautiful parallel with Vanishing Staircase by Birthe Lehmeijer at the back of the museum, on the Singel.
Go check it out too!
Birthe Lemeijer, Vanishing Staircase. Centraal Museum Utrecht / photo Robert Oosterbroek
Fern Folly is located on Agnietenstraat, about 50 metres to the left of the museum entrance.
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