A show garden that sets out to commemorate and challenge homophobic attacks has won a prestigious gold medal at the world’s largest flower show.
The Pansy Project is an on-going artwork by artist Paul Harfleet, who plants pansies to mark the location of homophobic incidents and hate crimes, from verbal abuse to homophobic murders.
Harfleet has now taken his project to The Hampton Court Flower Show, the world’s largest annual flower show, in a show garden in the ‘Conceptual Gardens’ category. The garden consists of a shattered concrete pavement, with the cracks gradually being filled by 4000 pink pansies.
The garden has been awarded a gold medal by Royal Horticultural Society judges; their highest level of award reserved for gardens of horticultural excellence, and has also been awarded ‘Best in Show’ in the conceptual gardens category.
In a leaflet being given out to visitors to the show, which runs until this Sunday, Artist Paul Harfleet describes the meaning of the garden:
“The Pansy Project Garden is a challenging conceptual garden which combines the languages of horticulture and sculpture to metaphorically present the concepts The Pansy Project explores to an audience outside of the project’s usual context.
“The garden has a disguised political agenda, encouraging visitors to consider the notions of homophobia, psychogeography, memorialisation, citizenship and the political ownership of public space.”
More details on www.thepansyproject.com.