Flower Clock

Flower Clock

Culture & society

By: Yulia Kovanova, Blake Ewing, Lorienne Whittle & Graham Stone
Interdisciplinary Workshop Outcome

 

Image credit: Woodland Trust

 

The concept of the Flower Clock departed from the idea of a “messy” garden. Perfectly manicured lawns and meticulously arranged garden spaces are often an aesthetic that is socially aspired to. However, it is the “messy” garden – the garden where different elements of the ecosystem can intermingle on their own terms – which offers space for life to thrive in the round. A messy garden welcomes a wider array of non-human visitors, from beetles and bees to birds and hedgehogs.

Image credit: National History Museum

The wide range of flowering plants in the messy garden can act as temporal signifiers, as the emergence of flowers announce the plant’s readiness for their pollinating partners. Unlike the traditional flower calendar, which advises the month when it might be best to plant or observe different types of flowers, the Flower Clock looks at the changes revealed when, because of climate change, flowers bloom at atypical times. When the temperature has been unseasonably warm, for example, plants may flower earlier than expected – signifying their readiness for pollination or offering fruits for our avian and insect kin and this will be reflected in the colours of the garden itself. It is this relationship between climate, plants and wildlife that is of such importance because changes in flower appearance can affect the entire ecosystem of which it is part.

Although a small change in the time of bloom might appear insignificant to humans, it could be a death sentence for pollinating insects and the other creatures dependent upon them if they have not also changed their schedule.

The flower clock can be visualised as a moving image piece, documenting historical changes of bloom in temporal colour, with the twelve months of the year mapped onto the face of a clock and the varying colours of flowers appearing in the months in which they bloom. These colours would alternate to show the change and overlap of periods in bloom year on year since they were first recorded, working from historical data such as the Woodland Trust’s Nature’s Calendar, which holds records dating back to 1736.
Go to top
Back

This is a unique website which will require a more modern browser to work!

Please upgrade today!

Share