Betty and Barry's Garden
Exploring the landscape of memory, Betty and Barry's garden was a magical place of my childhood that has informed all of my design and horticultural practice to this day, like many beautiful gardens it now only exists in my memory as it has fallen foul of slash and burn development styles. Through the abstraction of sketch plan drawing I'm inviting the viewer to build their own pictorial understanding of the landscape, which can be contrasted by a series of photographs at the end of the film.
Location:
Bentleigh
Alistair Kirkpatrick has been working in the fields of landscape architecture and ecology for more than two decades, with a particular focus on Melbourne’s vegetation communities. He cares deeply about the preservation of remnant ecologies while simultaneously recognising the potential value of novel ecologies in urban regions. He is interested in testing ideas of vegetation as a space-generator, challenging the current model of hardscape as the dominant element of built projects. He has worked in tertiary education for over a decade and RMIT and Melbourne university and is currently architect a horticultural and landscape design teacher at Melbourne Polytechnic.