one day all this will be fields

“Hedge”, a word originally meaning “enclosure” – is both the edge and what’s inside. Hedges define the look of our countryside and gardens, are legal boundaries, protectors of our privacy, make ecological superhighways, form the space of agriculture, provide food for free and make a strange in-between public place for us all. The art work “One day all this will be fields”, consists of newly planted fruiting trees and shrubs, marker field furniture sculptures and signs guiding residents to food for free around a new housing project in Hilperton, Wilts. Converting sterile green verges back into fruitful places for the suburban forager the h-edges project has marked out a 1/3 scale miniature linear farm with a free, low maintenance food supply of edible fruits, inspired by the British tradition of making “model villages” and “model farms”. The signs were made with crowd sourced images of the free food being grown or foraged in the area and mark out the boundaries of the old fields in a Wiltshire poetry -“Moonlight”, “Upper Freeze”, “Ferris’ Leaze”, “Paxcroft Mead” and so on.

Participatory foraging and cocktail making, installation, galvanised steel sculpture, planting of wild fruits, signage and website with tours.

It was commissioned by Commissions Projects for Wiltshire Council. A collaboration between ruralrecreation, landscape designers Ginkgo Projects, Somerset Forge and the Mendip Garden Company with participation from local residents, Hilperton Parish Council, the Paxcroft Mead Residents Association, the Women’s Institute, Curo Housing and The Mead Primary School. Funded by section 106 contributions from developers Taylor Wimpey and Abbey Homes. Photos by John Le Brocq