Deodar cedar
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Audio piece – December
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Audio piece – January
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Audio piece – February
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Pond life
We are blessed with two ponds at Crossbones: the infinity pond (below left) and the eco pond (below right). The infinity pond sits directly beneath the pyramid in the garden’s north-west corner, placing a downward facing triangle at the foot of an upward facing one, gesturing to earth and sky simultaneously, bridging the realms inhabited by the dead and the living. The eco pond nestles around the edge of the Goose’s Wing, which draws visitors to Crossbones into a protective embrace as they enter the site.…
Teasel
This beautiful profile of a teasel was drawn by one of our attendees at a recent biodiversity monitoring event at Crossbones.
Over the first winter that I was coming to know Crossbones, I was surprised at first to see a plant that looked dried out and dead left standing. It didn’t fit my idea of what a garden should be. I had grown up in a cultural context in which evidence of death and decay tended to be swept away in gardens, just as death and decay are often swept away in conversation and from being acknowledged as a central tenet of our everyday, embodied, and more-than-human existence.…
Mizuko Jizō
At the southern end of Crossbones Graveyard, a group of stone statues stand with their backs to the City, facing the old cemetery wall. Each statue is about as tall as a toddler, wearing a serene resting expression. The stone folds of their monk’s robes ripple downwards into the sea of ivy they seem to be emerging from. Some of the statues – known as Mizuko Jizōs – wear hand-crotched red bonnets, some fading with the weather, some fresh and bold, while others wear pendants and sashes inked with felt-tipped epitaphs.…
Buddleia
Buddleia davidii is a familiar sight to most Londoners, even to those who don’t know it by name. It might be that gangly tree spurting out of the edge of your balcony, from the top of that warehouse roof, or edging the gravelly banks alongside the train tracks. Given a little time and space, buddleias establish themselves into dense thickets: a single buddleia plant produces many thousands of seeds over the course of a year, potentially over a million.[1]
Buddleia is frequently seen spilling out from behind the hoardings of sites awaiting redevelopment.…