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. 

“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. 

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.  

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.

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.

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.