A landscape architect intern at Stellenbosch University’s Botanical Garden (SUBG), and her teammates, are currently showcasing their garden design at an international garden festival.
The intern, Katy Rennie, saw the call for entries for the Radicepura Garden Festival in 2020 in an Instagram advertisement.
Katy Rennie, a Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden Intern, recently had the opportunity to construct her garden design at the Radicepura Garden Festival in Italy. Rennie told MatieMedia that because of Covid-19 lockdown regulations, her team had to “jump through all sorts of hoops to be allowed into Italy”. PHOTO: Carla Visagie
“I was really interested in the theme and the fact that it’s a six-month show,” said Rennie. Out of about 500 garden designs that were submitted for the 2021 festival, seven finalists were chosen, including Rennie and her team.
The theme of this year’s festival, which is running from 27 June until 19 December, is “gardens of the future”, according to Annalisa Praitano, communications manager of the festival. The judges considered the coherence, philosophy, and overall practicality of the designs when selecting the finalists, she said.
Katy Rennie’s design at the Radicepura Garden Festival in Sicily, Italy. One of the challenges of the festival was that the dust from the active volcano nearby, Mount Etna, soiled the designs, according to Annalisa Praitano, communications manager of the festival. PHOTO: Supplied/Katy Rennie
As part of the prize, Rennie’s team – which includes Rennie Dalberg, Josie Dalberg and Amber Myers – received the opportunity to construct their garden design at the Radicepura Garden Festival in Sicily, Italy. All of the construction expenses were paid for by the festival, according to Rennie.
“It kind of felt like a miracle that we even got there,” said Rennie, referring to the difficulty in getting flights to Italy due to Covid-19 lockdown regulations.
Katy Rennie, a landscape architect at the Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden, submitted a winning design to the Radicepura Garden Festival in Italy. GRAPHICS: Supplied/Katy Rennie
While the projects selected for construction were the winners of the festival, there is an Italian magazine, Gardenia, that will assign a prize to the garden that lasts the best, said Praitano.
Gardens of the future
Rennie and her team’s design, titled ‘garden of the anthropocene’, used boxes of builders rubble with seeds in between to showcase how human activities affect the future of nature, said Rennie.
The construction of a new threatened lowland habitat display has begun at the Stellenbosch University’s Botanical Garden (SUGB). Katy Rennie, a landscape architect intern at SUBG, told MatieMedia that she is assisting with the design of the display. PHOTO: Carla Visagie.
Their garden was unique, as it did not display any plants at the opening ceremony on 27 June, according to Josie Dalberg, a member of Rennie’s team.
“Our design – a stacking of boxes, of dirt and recycled rubble, without a plant to be seen at the opening event – strongly countered the typical garden festival focus, which is often on the
picturesque and maintained aesthetic,” said Dalberg.
The idea behind the design was to create a catalyst, with the garden developing into a more organic shape as the plants grow and the containers deteriorate, according to Rennie.
Katy Rennie, a landscape architect intern at the Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden, is assisting in the design of a threatened lowlands habitat display for the garden. PHOTO: Supplied/Katy Rennie
Applying knowledge on home ground
Rennie told MatieMedia that the knowledge she gained at the festival gave her confidence in the designs she is currently assisting with at the SUBG. One of the designs that she is assisting with is the new threatened lowland habitat display, she said.
“[With this installation], we want to showcase the really threatened vegetation types in the Western Cape, so that people can recognise them and realise that they are extremely special,” said Rennie.
Another big adjustment that the SUBG is currently busy with is the rearranging of the garden’s cycads into a single display, according to Dr Donovan Kirkwood, the curator of the SUBG.
There is no set date yet for the finalisation of the cycad display, but it will be done “within the next few months”, said Rennie.
The new cycad display on Van Riebeeck street’s side of the Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden (SUBG) is intended to “get botany kids excited about these lineages of plants that are really, really old”, according to Dr Donovan Kirkwood, Curator of the SUBG. PHOTO: Carla Visagie