Laputa – the floating garden

The European Garden – Project Laputa

I have a long-term project plan about creating a green place, a Garden, a ´European garden´. This garden would not belong to a particular country but would be interconnected; floating above cultures but also embedded into the culture of its physical location. This would be a safe place for integration, arrival. A space where people would heal theirendlessgardens8 traumas of migration, can have a rest without being pressed to do anything particular. This garden would be a place for work, for learning, for art, for therapy, just for being. This would be a place without labels, without special aims, where people would keep their dignity and respect. This place would be a ´floating´ station of silence, place of healing, where people could be energized and empowered. Physical presence, physical work, embodied programs would make possible to get back to the inner balance if it has been somehow lost it in the transition, in the long journey in between the old and the future home. Both spiritually and physically this garden would be modeled after medieval cloister gardens, floating between the heavens and the earth, rooted in the soil, but anchored in the universal.

I am looking for possible partners, who see a practical and methodological opportunity to deploy such a garden in their current or future projects.

There are some wonderful examples how flowers can give us back hope in life:

  • For most of the last five years there has been a small oasis of colour and life amidst the destruction and grief of rebel-held Aleppo. It’s the garden centre, which has supplied plants and blooms and foliage to people in that part of the city throughout the war.