Sophie
Standford
About

A Rural Idyll
In the Forest Garden
Inner Landscapes
Absent Presence
Trace
Work on paper

@hortus_silvam

In the Forest Garden Selected Works

This forest garden is an ongoing project responding to a journey of discovery, using an opportunity to transform the grass lawn of a small garden into a rich wealth of diversity, incorporating precious plants inherited from family members no longer alive, in an attempt to promote biodiversity in the face of climate crisis compounded by the intensive, industrially farmed mono-crops that dominate the surrounding landscape.

In the forest garden, a world of mysterious expectancy emerges from the ephemeral, rhythmic repetition of cycles and seasons, where time confuses and dissipates, vibrant and busy with light and life. Despite its tiny size, the forest garden is wild, an alchemy of memory and dreams, a play between artist and plants, provoking the dormant seed bank, urging new arrivals, pruning and harvesting, watching the (in)visible and listening to the (in)audible, challenging the senses with patience and adversity, chaos and order, growth, decay and metamorphosis.

Over the last few years the garden has re-emerged into the pubic discourse as a growing understanding of the effects of climate change and the state of the planet in our Anthropocene world, acknowledging the contribution gardens can play as part of a biodiverse ecology. In 2014, Standford initiated this body of work by studying the design, implementation and maintenance of a temperate forest garden - or food forest - with leading expert and author Martin Crawford, on his research site in the South West of England, UK.  

© Sophie Standford, 2025
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