Thornrose - A Garden of Thorny Delights , a modern take on a classic fairy tale inspired the design for the winning submsission for the 2012 Chaumont sur Loire garden show themed Gardens of Delight - Gardens of Delirium, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the garden show hosted in the Loire Valley.
The entrance wall is shrouded by beautiful and excessively thorny cream toned roses. Beyond the wall, one is welcomed to the main garden space, by a spinous paradise, an enchanted fairyland of sharp, ominous and alluring outcasts of the plant world. Thistles, cardoons (Cynara cardunculus), teasels, devil’s trumpets (Datura metel), bear’s breeches (Acanthus spinosus) and tumbleweed paint a sublime landscape - one that both threatens and seduces us, enchants and awakens our both our senses and our fantasies.
The Garden of Thorny Delights, much like the story that inspires it, addresses the relationship between the beautiful and the sublime, pleasure and pain, and as such, it becomes a place of, not only, raging madness of a wicked fairy, but also the serenity of a 1000 dreams.