Julia Watson and Lo—TEK were featured in Vitra Design Museum's traveling exhibition and publication Garden Futures in 2023. The exhibition poses questions about contemporary garden ideals and their role in shaping a liveable future. It showcases diverse examples, from urban farms to community gardens and works by renowned designers like Roberto Burle Marx and Derek Jarman.

The exhibition’s final section examines contemporary projects addressing the future of gardens. In an age of climate crisis, social injustice, biodiversity under threat, and social isolation, the garden offers a place in which to reimagine the future and develop solutions – a place of healing, spirituality, and learning. In the age of the Anthropocene – that is the message of these and similar projects – the entire planet emerges as a garden that we need to cultivate, tend, and use responsibly. The exhibition will be accompanied by a lavishly illustrated publication including in-depth essays, conversations with leading garden makers, and case studies of pioneering projects.

 

Julia's spotlight in the exhibition, publication, and her online interview addresses how ancient practices that have been sustained across the world for generations have the power to tackle climate-related stressors. Curators centered her mission to integrate this framework of traditional ecological knowledge into contemporary landscape practice.