Trothwy
National Trust Dyffryn Gardens, Vale of Glamorgan, 20th June-18th July 2025
Commission for “Art in the Garden” as part of National Trust Cymru season “Wanderland”
Trothwy celebrates our co -existence with the more-than-human inhabitants of Dyffryn Gardens. It marks the threshold, or portal, into a special home belonging to many plants and creatures, a home that is tended and cared for by humans.
Developed in response to recent biodiversity surveys of the gardens, and through conversations with the garden team about their relationships to this space, the work seeks to invite visitors to remember that this place is a home, into which they are invited but temporary guests.
The work itself is a place of dwelling, a constructed habitat, that it is hoped might be lived in for the duration of the exhibition. Created almost entirely from storm damaged trees from the Dyffryn Gardens arboretum, it gives a second life to these elders before they are chipped and composted to feed the soil onsite over autumn. The structure evolved over the three day build in response to the materials available, eventually forming a journey from dark and wintery Spruce foliage at the base, up into springy Beech leaf and a lighter feeling at the top. Acer and Spruce branches provide a skeleton, and Himalayan Birch and Oak add their unique textures. Each tree brings its own unique collection of lifeforms to the structure – mosses, lichens, and insects. The whole structure is land based, reclaimed, re-useable, and ultimately returnable to the land from which it grew.
Within the portal is a welcome message to visitors and an honour list of all the 157 species of invertebrates, flora, and fungi who call the Great Lawn and ponds home, handwritten over a period of 24 hours in oak gall ink, in the shape of the layout of the formal gardens. The top circle offers a passageway and a shelter to insects and birds moving between the wilder and more formal or watery parts of the garden; whilst the lower circle offers a space for human visitors to pass through, to stop within, and to marvel at the amount of life existing within this special place.
Situated in a central position on the Great Lawn, Trothwy is also reflected in the pond, bringing together the land and water habitats and highlighting their interdependence. Through the portal can also be seen the (human) house, offering a meeting of the two worlds and marking where the wild meets the formal, whilst offering a safe place for the wild to exist more freely within the formal too.
Several smaller portals are sited around the gardens as an invitation to visitors to look deeper, to look differently, and to cross the threshold into wandering and wondering – creating a journey of re-imagining right through the gardens. These smaller frames also serve as resting places for dragonflies and other small winged creatures between the air and the water.
As we build the structure more and more creatures appear and take up residence- a butterfly, a robin, many types of ladybird… a blue dragonfly passes through the portal at the top to tell us it is complete.
Thanks to the gardening team at Dyffryn, NT volunteers Dylan and Ceri, and to Simon and Joe from Wye Coppice for support with the build and supply of additional materials.