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Although Mollie was quite sure of what effect the framed plantings should achieve, she needed to strike a balance between a formal barrier and an informal transparency. Choosing the plant(s) that might deliver these requirements, in the conditions posed by the sculpture, was quite demanding. Only time will tell whether Perovskia can be regularly pruned and tied in to give the desired effect, and not grow too tall in the process. These are typical of the considerations made for many of the ‘Living Artworks’ at Taurus, not least of which is Paul Cooper’s Heavy Metal Garden, which hangs high up on the outside gable end of the Taurus Restaurant.

The ‘garden’ clearly reflects Paul’s background as a sculptor and leans heavily on his early sculptural works that quite often comprised huge pieces of metal and explored the tension created by the juxtaposition of their component parts. His experience of creating many site-specific sculptures in public places both here and in the U.S., and his international reputation for designing innovative contemporary gardens, made him an obvious choice as an Artist in Residence with the brief to produce a thought-provoking piece of ‘Living Art’.
 
Paul’s inspiration for the Heavy Metal Garden came from observing the way plants grow naturally in the most precarious and dynamic situations. Sometimes they establish themselves on the vertical walls of rocky outcrops, sometimes in the walls of man-made constructions such as buildings and railway cuttings. Paul noted how derelict factories and old mills are frequently colonised by plants whose growth, strength and power will often bring down the walls and contribute to the
‘de-construction’ of the buildings.
It was this dynamic relationship between living plants and hostile man-made environments that was the starting point for the Heavy Metal Garden. In the ‘Garden’ the plants, in soft containers, are held up the wall by pressure. They owe their existence high off the ground to steel clamps that hold them and squeeze them. Some of the plants are being forced to grow upside down! Without the steel bars and bolts the plants would tumble to the ground. Unable to take root on the patio floor below they would perish. The steel threatens them, but also supports them.

The overall shape and design of the garden takes its inspiration from an ancient Egyptian painting of a garden. The painter was not interested in representing space and reality. He preferred to describe a scene in a manner which showed it as clearly as possible, without the distortion and ambiguity which is often associated with more modern single point perspective. The painting looks flat, more like a pattern, but there is great attention to detail. Depicted in the painting is a garden pond surrounded by trees. The pond is seen from above, but the trees are painted side view– the clearest way to describe the scene. In the sculpture, the central area is planted with lavenders, which are ‘seen’ from above. In the outer, surrounding steel frame the dogwoods are seen side on—some growing upwards, some sideways and some down. The huge metal framework, weighing very close to half a ton, was constructed in the Artist in Residency studio, under the direction of engineer and builder John Twiddy from Kington, Herefordshire. It spans the whole space between four vertical slit windows in the gable wall, and has been deliberately left untreated to allow the mellowing rust colour to complement the natural stone surrounding the sculpture.

Paul has won Gold, Silver and Bronze medals for his garden designs at the Chelsea Flower Show, and the Fiskar’s Sword of Excellence for the best garden at Chelsea entitled ‘The Greening of Industry’. He was filmed making four episodes of gardening programmes for HTV during his residency at Taurus. The programmes featured his innovative ‘floating gardens’, his ideas for decorating shrubs out of season and plant containers inspired by the compression techniques used in the Heavy Metal Garden. His book ‘Living Sculpture’, which was launched soon after his stay here at Taurus, features ideas from around the world for using plants to provide sculptural elements within a landscape.
 
Paul Cooper also designed the children’s play area that adjoins the patio outside the Restaurant and the organic farm shop ‘La Bodega’. He calls it the Play Face, echoing the shape of the space it occupies. Having observed how children easily amused themselves on a large piece of interactive sculpture installed in the then newly opened Tate Modern, Paul designed the play area in a sculptural way, incorporating places to hide, jump, sit and play with sand. The mouth is used to make a sand pit, the cheeks are sitting areas, and the nose is a dual tunnel through the nasal hair of artificial grass. An ‘ear’ is made from a series of drums and tensioned wires to give the effect of a musical instrument whilst an ‘eye’ is a black cube incorporating a periscope to see out onto the world. The hair is depicted using a punk-like planting of Artemisia abrotanum and Lonicera nitida ‘Baggessen’s Gold’.
 

Formerly lecturer in Art and Design, University of Lancaster; participating in major exhibitions in Britain and USA, culminating in a visiting professorship at The Maryland Institute of Art

Since turning to garden design, has won RHS bronze, silver and gold medals. Won best garden at Chelsea with ‘Greening of Industry’

Unusual commissions include: ‘Instant Garden’ for BBC TV series ‘Gardens by Design’; ‘Radio Garden’ for Radio Four; ‘Boy’s Own’ garden for Ford Motor Company; ‘Cool and Sexy Garden’, Chelsea Flower Show; ‘Prism Garden’ for Marston & Langinger; ‘Just what is it?’ a prefabricated and portable garden, Hampton Court Flower Show

Commissions include re-design Dutch Garden at Parnham House; roof garden for ‘The Leonard Hotel, London; ‘Night Garden’, London

Books published:
‘The New Tech Garden’; ‘Living Sculpture’

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