Hi Commonty!
One from a little further south for you. Mark Dion's Tasting Garden was created for the Storey Gallery's garden in 1998, with the help of ArtTranspennine98 intending to create a permanent environmental artwork in the galleries disused garden space. A little more information on the origins of the artwork quoted from the Storey Gallery's website:
"The paths through The Tasting Garden are in the form of the branches of a tree. Reminiscent of a family tree, or an evolutionary tree, the branch pathwork also evokes the tree-of-life, a literary and visual metaphor with a rich cultural history.
Each of the four main branches of this tree-pathwork bears a major northern fruit (apple, cherry, plum and pear), and each small branch path ends in a particular variety of tree, together with a bronze sculpture of its fruit.
Many of the trees chosen for The Tasting Garden are rare or endangered varieties which are threatened by the shift to monoculture agricultural production. Industrial farming grows only a handful of varieties which have commercially desirable traits such as long shelf-life, large yields, and pest resistance. A number of breeds which are now neglected, but which offer a wider range of tastes and textures, are included in The Tasting Garden.
The garden is an artwork - the artwork is a garden."
Sadly, it was vandalised in 2009 - and the bronze fruits stolen from the garden which has since fallen into disrepair. Lancaster council now proposes removing the artwork, and a group of artists and local residents are petitioning to keep the garden, which is also available online. Signatories can be added via change.org here
Or read more of the story on Suzanne Heath's Public Art Network blog here
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