The Space Garden is a cultivated space for future visitors of the Ranch to share in rituals. Rituals involve times of anticipation followed by a shared experience. This cultivation will act as a countdown to a shared moment and a garden in bloom when the residents meet.

The title Space Garden refers to an ecological parable told in science fiction of the 70s such as in 1972s Silent Running. This film tells the story of an idealistic crew member of a 21st-century space station Freeman Lowell. Lowell is the space station’s resident botanist and ecologist. The film draws on themes of care in plant cultivation, environmental optimism, technology and the remote.

I borrow the concept of remotely generating fuel that NASA has developed for deep space exploration and apply this to a remotely cultivated organic space. The preparation and research for this garden feeds the anticipation. I took my research into plant associations in folk medicine as well as their contextual setting in Lithuanian countryside and made a maquette of the garden using parts of the plants which will comprise the final space. The process of making this model was a ritual.

The Space Garden is made up of 4 concentric circles. Each circle represents a layer of physical embodiment from the external to the internal. The circles will be planted with a medicinal or symbolic plant representative of each of these layers.

This project collaborates with time as the growth marks the passing moments. I consider the garden to be a form of slow technology that aids in reflection and moments of rest, rather than relentless efficiency in performance. The planted circle creates an intentional space for ritual and reflection and a concentrated organisation of plants found in the wider landscape.

Delay generates anticipation and creates the need for patience and planning over impulse and improvisation. The postponement of our time at the ranch provides the time to engage in this project, which requires an extended period of information gathering through dialogue and reading.

Visitors to the garden may be invited to pick some plant material from each layer as they move through and enter the space. The plant material could then become the material for the ritual that the garden provides a space for. This will act to share the geographically specific knowledge of folk medicine at the ranch. Each encounter with this garden is a ritual, from the planning, planting, and watering to the eventual appreciation and enjoyment of the garden in full bloom and the use of its crops.