London South Bank Festival of Britain - Eden Project garden - fruit trees

Blustery skies bring off this yellow paint bodge

You can really appreciate some of London's landmarks from the South Bank Centre terrraces.  It's an exposed site and you feel the beginning of the connection to the sea.  June is giving us lots of wind and rain. Apparently it rained as much in the first four days as in the previous three months.

Looking across the Thames to Somerset House

This kind of bedding is non-sustainable and anathema to me. It's also a horticultural no-no here, around these already starving trees.  Design-wise it's odd too, as these pots are adjacent to a wildflower area. Anyway, despite all that, I can't say no to these cheery little marguerite faces. I'm hoping the Eden Project, who put together this area, will be repatriating these trees with some TLC once the festival is over, and compost the short-lived flowers.

uninteresting to pollinators and unsustainable, but cheery

London South Bank Festival of Britain - landscape artifacts: The Morisons, Black Pig Lodge

Made of concrete, this bunker apparently is modelled on a Sami shelter. Inside is a polished coal altar that references defunct Welsh mining.  The materials are ingeniously used, and there's definitely an uncomfortable dis-used-cum-not-sure-what-rites-have-gone-on-here feel. As Ben Kelly's Enclosure, though, wrongly plonked.

damp bloom adds to feel of abandonment

coal stained Valleys concrete vs post-industrial brutalism

spooky

Polished coal - durable for outdoors?

Moorish, or farmhouse plastic kitchen flooring?

panels from a mould intsalled on a wooden frame

London South Bank Festival of Britain - landscape artifacts: Ben Kelly Enclosure

A trio of dry stone walling materials and techniques from around the UK, quite nicely made.  I am discomfited by the juxtaposition with the brutalist architecture, probably in a good way.  The artist and the curator of this exhibition have had  to put up with too many elements though: the attempt to remediate the brutalism with industrial paint and box balls, and yellow banners. Two compromises too far: chaos.