Toronto East General Hospital Terrace Garden, Toronto: The fifth-floor rooftop restorative garden has turned a place of residence into a home. The 75 residents of the Complex Continuing Care Unit now discover backyard beauty and joy in their new terrace garden. The garden draws on characteristics and features of the Sacred Landscape, enabling residents to draw on inner strength, spiritual connections and a sense of well being -- necessary for healing. It is a place in which to reconstruct a sense of reassurance and restoration of confidence gained through healthful aging; one that respects and values the diversity of residents and their support network, providing for both privacy and interaction with others.
Within a space 140 feet long, 9 to 23 feet wide, the garden is a sculpture, stimulating all senses. In response to the diverse backgrounds of the residents, the design was inspired by the richness and depth of historical and cultural details of the residents’ homelands and birthplaces. Two vibrantly coloured steel pavilions frame the garden at either end --- the yellow-ochre tent for active social gatherings, the light-blue temple for private refuge. A shallow pond-table sits in the middle of the piazza. The warmly coloured dry-laid sandstone walls of the planting beds hold the path. Scents of fragrant vines, shrubs and perennials trigger memories of meaningful places, engaging residents as plants grow to fill the garden. See Perspectives 1:2001 and 2:2003 for more extensive descriptions.
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The Philosophical Basis
for Designing the Restorative Garden:
To help strengthen physical, mental and spiritual health
in a balanced and harmonious relationship
with the natural and social environment.
--D.A.W.
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Milarepa Buddhist Meditation Center, Barnet, Vermont: 270 acres of mountain woodlands and meadows in eastern Vermont, overlooking the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the beautiful valley of the meandering Connecticut River. The buildings and gardens were designed for practitioners of Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Inspired by the monasteries and temples of India, Tibet and Japan, the buildings and gardens of Milarepa Center were translated into a western architectural and landscape design vocabulary familiar to western Buddhists - Vermont-style farmhouses surrounding a courtyard, with gardens flowing around and through the buildings. Feng-shui and respect for earth energy leys assure balance and harmony with nature. The gardens of native and naturalized species are composed of edible vegetative communities and unique natural features. Their design relates to events that visitors experience along the spiritual path, helping them develop a sense of spiritual awareness and presence in nature. |
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
-William Blake
Augeries of Innocence
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| Into a Universal Sacred Space… A proposal for the Interfaith Sacred Space Design Competition sponsored by United Religions Initiative, responding to their question: is genuine interfaith space possible? The submission by TALES of the EARTH gives form to a theory of spatial organizing principles describing sacred space, presented as the SIX AUSPICIOUS SIGNS of the SACRED LANDSCAPE. Mindful of the importance of landscapes native to individual religious cultures and traditions, this place is designed to welcome and unite people from differing cultures and disciplines, inviting all without distinction nor prejudice.
The corten-steel structure hovers on a cushion of air above the bay near the coast of Iles de la Madeleine: : This location was chosen because the seas belong to everyone, and to no one. Access by boat, arrival at pods, migrating towards the core. A sanctuary is discovered at its centre, surrounded by flexible spaces for gathering and meditation, gardens for circumambulation and food, powered by sun and water. The architecture is inspired by details from designed sacred landscapes. In response to the need for practitioners of each religious culture and tradition to meditate and pray towards a particular cardinal direction, the structure rotates as necessary towards east, south, west or north --- an ephemeral landscape. See Perspectives 1:2004.
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Scarborough Campus, University of Toronto: A naturalized woodland, garden and meadow for central campus. Renowned architect John Andrews designed the buildings; landscape architect Michael Hough, the original campus plan. The open space, the site of this project, was originally formed by the retreat of the interconnected buildings from the rim of the plateau overlooking Highland Creek Valley Conservation Area. TALES of the EARTH designed the new open space with a distinct central meadow and secondary terrace spaces meandering through naturalized woodland. The open space was maintained to insure the integrity of the architecture, while the design and location of the new woodland gave rise to buildings seemingly growing from the forest. This design became a challenging exercise inserting into the landscape a symbiotic relationship of architecture – garden – nature. Like the web of interlocking fingers, the meadow became an extension of the open space down the hill to the valley; the new woodland of large sugar maple – beech – red oak on the meadow’s edge with the steep wooded slopes. The entire landscape accentuated the sweeping panoramic view of the valley |
| Greywater Treatment Garden at the Royal Winter Fair: An exhibit showing how a beautiful and ecologically sustainable garden treats residential greywater with the Clivus Multrim Greywater Treatment System. Visitors walk through the process. In the Greywater Tea House, visitors learn that greywater is wash water from the kitchen, bathroom and laundry. Following the water down the drain, they see it directed to a filter box that removes particles of food, lint and hair. The water is pumped out of the filter box into perforated pipes near the surface of the garden, the most biologically active region of the soil. The greywater circulates through the garden bed, providing nutrients for fertility, sustenance and growth to plant roots and other life forms, thereby removing polluting substances and purifying the water. The purified water is then used for the pond, where a bronze figure by Canadian sculptor Liardi is about to dip her toe, demonstrating the fresh quality of the treated water.
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"The Zen Garden" - Artists' Garden No 9 at Harbourfront Centre, Toronto: Originally designed as a two-month exhibit for Harbourfront's Today's Japan, the "Zen Garden" honours the physical centre of Buddhist cosmology, found at the sacred site of Mt. Kailas in Western Tibet.
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