IOWA STATE PROFESSOR TRANSFORMS GARDEN INTO CELTIC MYTH AT ENGLAND'S WESTONBIRT FESTIVAL

AMES, Iowa -- A magical landscape inspired by Celtic culture is one of 13 gardens selected for the Westonbirt Festivalof The Garden this summer in England. The "Otherworld Garden" is the creation of Mira Engler, associate professor oflandscape architecture at Iowa State University.

More than 200 garden designs from throughout the world competed for a place in the prestigious Westonbirt, one of threemajor international garden festivals. Engler's is the only entry from the United States to be selected.

An estimated 130,000 people will visit the festival, June 4-Sept. 12, at the National Arboretum, Gloucestershire.Gloucestershire is located in the history-rich Cotswold region of southwest England.

The designers received $24,000 for plants, materials and labor for their gardens, which they installed in May.

The Westonbirt Festival of The Garden is known for displaying innovative and experimental garden plans. Designs arechosen for their originality, strength of design, use of materials, wit and inspirational nature.

Engler approached her 'Otherworld Garden' as a cultural artifact. She reached deep into the enigmatic Celtic symbolsand myth that permeate the Cotswold to tell a narrative in the landscape.

"I'm always searching for narratives to understand how the landscape was shaped. We need to decipher these narratives,reveal and add to them," Engler said.

"Landscape architecture isn't only about making pretty places. It's also about making meaningful places," shesaid.

Engler's garden uses mystical imagery and rugged local materials to articulate the spiritual connections of people tonature.

The 6,000-square-foot "Otherworld Garden" straddles an open meadow and an old forest. A raised limestone path spiralsacross a blanket of purple, salmon pink and blue ground cover, leading visitors from the lightness of the field to thedarker woods.

An erect stone near the spiral bears an inscription from the "Battle of the Trees," a poem by the 6th century poet,Taliesin. The quote is written in the ancient Ogham language.

"It describes trees coming to life, becoming warriors," Engler said. "Many people here are familiar with the mythologyand ideas of pagan religion, which has an emotional connection to nature."

The spiral path connects the clearing to the woods, which Engler and English sculptor John Packer transformed into aworld of wonder and imagination. Giant figures-- animals and other mythological beings seem to rise from the land andemerge from the trees. The sculptures are gabions, mesh-wire cages shaped into creatures that are a paradox offamiliarity and strangeness.

"The images for the sculptures are from ancient artifacts. They're recurring images in the culture and builtenvironment here," she said.

The sculptures include Greenman--the spiritual manifestation of trees, Helm--the helmet of a Celtic warrior, cauldronsor sacred vessels, a ram-horned serpent and Sheela-na-gig, the guardian of the otherworld and the spirit that gives andtakes life.

With climbing plants and ferns partially covering some sculptures, the figures also resemble the ancient, regionaltumuli mounds where fairies were once believed to live, Engler said.

The cauldron gabions also hold stones that visitors are invited to take.

"The festival's garden designers are asked to design gardens that give visitors 'ideas to steal.' I thought that was anunusual way to put it. I fixated somewhat on that expression, and turned it into a feature of the garden. People willliterally have something to take away with them--a stone," Engler explained.

She chose stones to reference the limestone walls that the Cotswold is known for.

"They have amazing limestone walls that are built using a dry technique--they're made with no mortar, the stonessupport themselves," she said. "The idea is that the earth is moving. So a dry stone wall settles with the movement ofthe ground, while a mortared wall ends up with cracks. It's a very organic approach." Visitors can stamp their stonewith a letter from the Ogham language that represents the name of one of the nearby trees.

"The main 20 letters in the Ogham alphabet are also names of 20 trees that were sacred to the druids," Englerexplained. "It's the idea of the integration of culture and landscape.

"The spiritual connection of the Celtic people to nature, which recognized the essential aliveness of nature, is theinspiration for my garden. Their myth of the otherworld offers a landscape narrative of intense emotions andaesthetics," Engler said.

"We usually erase these stories, or we don't know them at all. But a garden is physically and spiritually alive. It's ariddle to be deciphered."