Derek Jarmans garden: For him, gardening, life and art formed a unity

All the gardens are symbols of transience and rebirth. None of this is more than the almost dystopian system, the Derek Jarman created against all odds in the s

Derek Jarmans garden: For him, gardening, life and art formed a unity

All the gardens are symbols of transience and rebirth. None of this is more than the almost dystopian system, the Derek Jarman created against all odds in the shadow of a nuclear power plant on the stone beach of the headland of Dungeness. In this barren, salt-wind-swept spot on the South-East-most edge of England, the British film-maker, artist and activist in 1986, had bought the fisherman's cottage Prospect Cottage. Shortly thereafter, he learned of his HIV infection, as well as a fatal diagnosis. Jarman described the garden, which he tore in the remaining seven years, according to his own words, "on borrowed time" the barren gravel ground to the black wooden hut around it, as his Eden and Gethsemane.

Gina Thomas

feuilleton correspondent, based in London.

F. A. Z.

to document In the bedroom of Prospect Cottage used to Jarman a simple table made of elm with a view of the sea, the garden and to reflect about his life, his work, the state of England and his physical deterioration. Some of these, with a distinctive font in black ink written, between tenderness and bitter irony, rebellion, and nostalgia iridescent diaries are now in an exhibition at the London's Garden Museum on the connection between Jarmans garden and its factory to see. The former medieval parish Church of St Mary’s has been simulated Lambeth, next to the London residence of the archbishops of Canterbury, on the southern banks of the Thames-based Museum of English garden history of Prospect Cottage, between the pointed arches partially. Great photographs and architectural elements Jarmans property to summon up to the harsh light, the intense splash of color to the planting offer Paroli. Antiquarian books about the theory of color, demonstrate his engagement with the theory. Over crunching gravel, the visitor enters the hut, the playback of the tongue - and-groove boards paneled the rooms in the wood.

a Successful call for donations

the title of The exhibition – "My garden's boundaries are the horizon" is Jarmans description of his property without a fence between the sky and the sea. But it also stands as a metaphor for the tail end of the thought-world, in the Museum with a selection of objects from his estate insight. Including the 1909 published a garden book, a gift from the parents to the four-year-old woke in him the first garden of passion. Plants, books, garden tools, sculptures from driftwood and other flotsam and Jetsam, tar paintings, in which Jarman and his concern for the environment expressed, as well as stage designs, notes, and film the inseparable unity of gardeners, life and art cut-outs to illustrate.

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As the exhibition was being prepared, was the future of Prospect Cottage still up in the air. In the meantime, Jarmans legacy has been through a successful call for donations secured. However, the consequences of the Corona epidemic gnaw at the substance of the Garden Museum, receives the income to seventy percent of tickets, space rentals, events, and the Café. For the remaining thirty percent of the Museum is dependent on donations. Its Director Christopher Woodward hopes to be able to a part of the shortfall through a sponsored swim to compensate: He has made around eighty kilometres long route between Newlyn in Cornwall and Tresco on the Isles of Scilly, which has placed the painter and herbalist Cedric Morris with the sail boat back. In the past few years, Woodward has erschwommen already 145,000-pound for the Museum. In the previous routes, he was oriented to the botanists, gardeners and collectors, Tradescant, father and son, both named John. At the beginning of the seventeenth century and stocked the first public Museum in England, with the of their research trips returned curiosities.

Date Of Update: 19 July 2020, 17:19