The Windows of Eden

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created to live in Paradise, and Paradise was designed to serve us. Our purpose changed: we are not told whether the same has also happened to the purpose of . a ka, Zürau Aphorisms, no. 84

mosaic of neglected corners. Of these the richest was the Valley Garden, a couple of acres of abandoned orchards, overgrown terraced beds (originally planted to demonstrate taxonomy to botany students), and wonderfully dilapidated glasshouses, with at its heart a secret pond where great knots of frogs gathered every February for a breeding frenzy. I loved exploring this Edenic, almost post-human spot at lunchtime, with its little stream that looded regularly a ter heavy rain, turning the valley bottom into a marsh. When my children were at the university day nursery I would take them exploring here, too, and we would gather apples from the orchard and check on the progress of the frogspawn in the pond.

Most of the year, especially in winter, I had the place to myself. A ter a long morning enduring the boredom of meetings, I could escape into my private hortus conclusus, and document the regular small changes that would excite my eye, at first with film, then digitally: broken panes of glass scribbled over by snails, abandoned botanical experiments, the astonishing table-sized leaves of Gunnera manicata (the giant Brazilian rhubarb) that grow by the stream, the tell-tale traces le t by invasive nocturnal thrill-seekers... Every day was a fresh page. Eventually, however, someone in the university administration noticed this "wasted" space, and decided to re-develop it into a hazard-free leisure resource for sta f and students. The Gates of Eden were chained shut and, lamenting, I was expelled into the world.

In the intervening years, I somehow kept forgetting about these garden images, as I concentrated on newer, more purposeful photographic and digital-imaging projects. Recently, though, I revisited them – several thousand digital images taken between 2000 and 2014, ranging in size from 1.3 MP to 16 MP – and it was like finding the key to a locked drawer and seeing within, almost as if for the first time, some wonderful things. Best of all, I think, are the images of those glasshouses, made as their abandonment into dereliction proceeded over the years, culminating in their demolition in 2007.

Mike Chisholm 2023

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