Alchemical Garden

Sign posted at the Alchemical Garden Site

The Green Artists League (GAL), is turning a desolate field of weeds into a visually compelling garden that will educate and engage the community for years to come. We call this initiative the Alchemical Garden and it is designed to become a model for a sustainable, interactive public garden through the use of symbiotic, low maintenance plantings and recycled materials.

Located on a 160′ x 25′ site near the South Entrance of Newburyport’s Clipper City Rail Trail, the Alchemical Garden is a richly layered evolving art and horticulture experience accessible on many different levels to the public.

The ancient discipline of Alchemy marries art and science and is famously known for transforming a common material into gold. The Alchemical Garden will lead the community to transform on a number of levels:

BUILD COMMUNITY: The Garden creates a gathering space for individuals to form a more intimate relationship with their community. The space is designed with visual features and seating areas to compel passers-by to pause, reflect, and have a multi-sensory interactive experience ( sight, smell, touch, taste, smell) with the garden and the community.

Alchemical Garden Plot plan

NOURISH/HEAL: The garden will nourish its visitors – both literally and figuratively. Pesticide free edible fruit will be nourishing to human and animal guests. Also, the trees and plants have been selected specifically to ensure they work together to purify the toxins in the soil and to sustain themselves and a rich habitat for local fauna over

time.

EDUCATE: Signage and sculptural features in the garden will highlight Newburyport’s history of innovation and will link the area’s past with its present. The garden will act as a living laboratory, by cleaning up the soil by using hyper-accumulating plants and engaging local students and members of the community in soil testing and monitoring the remediation of toxins. GAL will use the Alchemical Garden as a center for workshops and other events that will educate the public about soil contamination, remediation, ecosystems and permaculture.

Rubedo (Red) Tree Guild.

INSPIRE: The Alchemical Garden focuses on the web of relationships between people and the natural world. Signage in the garden will inform and engage visitors to act in the interest of the community’s future.

In addition to the construction of the art park, the Alchemical Garden project will contribute to the community in innovative ways though educational workshops and interactive art performances that will seek to awaken each individual’s own capacity for imagination and action and to become more engaged stewards of the environment.

The Alchemical Garden is a multi-year project, with completion anticipated in 2012 depending on the level of community support.

Thanks to a grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts in 2010, GAL has conditioned the soil and planted fruit trees and berries and several art sculptures made from living plants. Now in 2011, we are making a public appeal to bring the next phase of the Alchemical garden to fruition.

Please Donate:

GAL is grateful to The Urban Arts Institute of the Massachusetts College of Art who has committed to being GAL’s non-profit fiscal sponsor for the Alchemical Garden. Please click the Urban Arts logo below to make your tax deductable donation and become “co-creators” in the Alchemical Garden. You will be taken to the Urban Arts page at Network for Good. You must put Alchemical Garden in the optional designation box for your donation to go to the Alchemical Garden.