Le Jardin de la Bière

Design for a festival garden for the festival des jardins. Le Jardin de la Bière is composed with the four basic ingredients of beer: barley, hop, water and yeast. With these simple ingredients, a delirious delightful garden can be constructed. Le Jardin de la Bière offers a stroll through a waving field of barley, a wander through an enclosed corridor of hop and a feeling of freshness from a mist cladden waterpool. Le Jardin de la Bière ripens with the duration of the festival. The spaces become more defined, the color of the barley changes from a light, fresh green to a golden brown. The hop grows higher and higher, darkens in color and from july onward the smell of hopbells fills the air. The garden grows darker, higher and richer, as it grows towards its climax. At the end of the festival, le Jardin de la Bière is ripe and ready to harvest.

At the back of the garden, cut out from the hopcorridor, stands a beertable with a jar of yeast on it. With its brewing abilities, this tiny amount of yeast has the power to turn all the produce from the garden – barley, hop and water – into two hundred liters of beer. And so, when the festival is over and the harvested garden only exists in the mind, le Jardin de la Bière still offers a delightful delirium.