With the MA show looming, I have needed to consider how I present the work. Do I allow visitors to walk across the meadow? So far only myself has walked into the space and that has been bare foot and tentatively. The meadow is viewable from two sides with double doors at either end of the room, until now entry onto the soil has not been permitted with hazard tape across the access points.
I want people to explore the space and interact with the land. It is quite a different feel from the middle of the room and there is so much to see that is not possible from a distance. If I invite people to walk anywhere they please it may be interesting to see if they create a desire line, a common route that most people follow, but it is likely they will tread down and damage the young and delicate plants before that can happen.
So I have decided to create a path. I wanted a seat in the middle so people can rest and absorb the space but it was pointed out to me that it would be turning the space into a park with a bench, which is not the right thing for this.
The path I have created is made from local timber rounds, pine wood, rough cut, sunk into the ground by removing the soil from underneath. It felt daunting excavating parts of the land and removing the little plants that I have nurtured, but it feels really good to be able to freely access the space and move through it.
The path takes a meandering route, following my own desire line, mostly based on which direction made the least damage but still allowing people to move through much of the room. There happened to be a fairly natural line where plants hadn’t grown so much that I followed. I am pleased to make the path this way instead of installing it to begin with and building the meadow around it. This felt much more natural.
