The Paradoxical Garden is a collection of sculptural installations that focus on human-plant interactions in the garden to emphasise the connection between humans and their environment. Herein ‘nature’ as a human construct and culture are depicted as part of the same phenomenon in response to Bruno Latour’s (2011) perception that the current ecological condition is a result of a disconnect between nature and culture. Within the garden, its definition as nature improved by culture is questioned. Instead, Mateusz Salwa’s (2014:317) definition of the garden as a place where culture becomes nature and nature becomes culture is more appropriate. The garden is re-imagined and visualised as a clear example of how ‘nature’ and culture exist in a relational web. Following a dialogical approach to making, I depict conversations between human and plants using traditional artistic methods such as a visual journal and watercolour sketches. The visual journals portray my personal experience during the unfolding interactions with individual plants. More unconventional methods such as co-creating using customised devices to enable the plants to sketch with me are also employed. Both methods are a response to an attuned engagement with plants aimed at drawing attention to the agency of plants. Plants are therefore portrayed as participants in the complex system of the garden instead of passive recipients of human will. The paradox of the garden is based on the idea that it is a space where relationships traditionally perceived as binary such as nature and culture; artificial and natural; and object and subject co-exist and blur into one another. In agreement with Robyn Longhurst (2006) the garden offers an opportunity to create alternative views. The Paradoxical Garden is described as an ecological intervention in its aim to address the philosophical disconnect between nature and culture.

Within The Paradoxical Garden, I embody the relationship of care that develop between a gardener and the plants in the garden. Interactions with plants based on Josephine Donovan’s (2016) understanding of care are collaborative and considerate. Both the plant and the gardener are affected, the plant by being cared for and the gardener by tending to the needs of the plant. Being influenced by the aesthetics of care and actor network theory which gives prominence to the relationship between actors where neither human or non-human is dominant, means that this study is relational in its approach. Rather than a medium, plants are presented as subjects with intent, who become active collaborators in The Paradoxical Garden. The plants that form The Paradoxical Garden have proved themselves to be strong-willed and resilient, resulting in three bodies of work titled Care, Co-Create and Commingle. Each body of work emphasise a different aspect of the plants agency through collaboration that strengthens a sense of connection with non-human nature. This sense of connection assists with the experience of being part of the environment instead of in control of it. According to Timothy Morton (2007:44) this would lead to more responsible ecologically aware behaviour. Care explores how the performance of care affects both plant and gardener; Co-create aims to emphasise the subjectivity of plants while Commingle explores the spatial and material expression of people and plants in the garden. Each body of work aims to explore a different way of engaging with non-human subjects as a means to experience being embedded within the material world.

The Paradoxical Garden Catalogue