A love of nature – and particularly of the sea during her career as an underwater photographer – has led artist and bio-designer Zena Holloway to a whole new world of experimentation. For the past few years, she has been creating sustainable sculptures, vessels, wall hangings, homewares and fashion pieces from a lacy, web-like fabric she grows herself from wheatgrass roots. The result is extraordinarily beautiful, ethereal even: webs of coiled and interwoven roots that she manipulates to create the most intricate of patterns.
It was reading an article on bio-design, about people growing material from mushrooms, that first excited her interest and, after dabbling with that, she started experimenting with grassroots, which are ideal because they naturally mesh together. “Each cereal crop has a different root structure,” she explains. “Ryegrass is crinkly, like wool, while wheatgrass root is long, straight and strong.” The turnaround is quick: Zena germinates the wheatgrass seeds in a light room in her home-cum-studio in west London, for ten to 14 days, monitoring and watering it carefully before harvesting. Nothing is wasted, as the grass she cuts off is used as chicken feed.
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Field of Dreams - The naturalistic gem Hans Gieszen has created in former meadowlands near Utrecht in the Netherlands is the culmination of a lifelong passion
Ever since his mother gave him seeds as a small boy, gardening has been a passion for Hans Gieszen. He is completely self-taught, relying on garden visits and books for instruction, with one book in particular, Dream Plants for the Natural Garden by Henk Gerritsen and Piet Oudolf, influencing his style. “It was fascinating,” says Hans, remembering his first encounter with the book. “All those photos – pictures with mists and these tall and low plants and grasses. I realised I couldn’t do it in my small garden, but I kept dreaming and reading about it.”
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