Alexandra Palace and ideas for a garden construction

The People's Palace on the hill sometimes feels like a blueprint for how all public spaces should be. I feel at home there, among the graffiti and security guards, the temporary barriers and the street food stalls. At the bars, I see a chunky section on the list marked "lows and nos", the phrase I've been bellowing at confused barstaff for almost a year now. Happy Days.

The walk from the tube takes in the glorious wisteria pergola at Barratt Gardens, which is busy today with people hanging out and picnicking etc. under the flowers.

 

The walkways and pathways feature some elements which make a space feel like contributions and lingering and taking photos are more allowed; an illustrative mural on a terrace end, a property boundary display case (empty).  

Alexandra Park is vast, contains multitudes. Rest, recovery, green grass, tall trees. And then the palace at the centre of it all. Paths are made by human feet: there are only enough signs for safety's sake. It's usual to wander off the track a bit on the way to Alexandra Palace.

 

We were there to see Fourtet/Squidsoup (that's a link to a pre-pandemic show) and they have filled the central arena with a grid of hanging glowing tentacles, which light up, respond to, play with and track the music. They remind me of David Attenborough's glowing mucus cave-worms a little.

I found the secret library door when I went the wrong way down a road. I still have some problems with wayfinding, here and there. But when you have time to get lost, it's fun to get lost, sometimes.

Edited to add: it got filmed!

So, in the garden, my garden or yours, hangdown light trails could sit beneath a pergola, tangled with vines. I have a vine that would jump at the job: though perhaps in that context it might work better to reference grapes hanging down, or indeed, wisteria.  

neon brights and sparkle sights

The tulips have started blooming now in the garden. This year they are huge, dramatic, absurd. Even the species tulips have done amazingly well, growing in huge dramatic clumps.

I've found myself particularly fond of coronet tulips this year, though the white peony types (which become dramatically streaked with plum tones as they age) are very striking indeed. They are lighting up the garden.

Garden lighting is dimming now; we are rewilding, learning to love our weeds, resisting the dig, and with that, reducing light pollution (which seems not to be great for insects, though some birds get longer foraging times). Not that garden solar lights are what they used to be; every now and again, I dig a tiny item which long since lost its faint gleam out of a tangle of alkanet and sling it in the small electricals recycling, from where it is probably refiled into mixed waste for energy recapture. 

I remember how delightful my first set of garden solar lights were, pulsing gently white along a path through the night. Over the years, they were optimised and cheapened, became smaller and lit more weakly. and now they are gone.

I wish I could navigate back to that sparkle in the night, though. 

Maybe the approach back is through the wonder of bioluminescence. People spray coating plants in bioluminescent paint aside there's not much available though perhaps we're simply not dimming lights down far enough; I remember the shock of eating at Dans le Noir and seeing the faintest of weak glows from a weakly bioluminescent seafood dish, to frail to be seen except in complete darkness. 

Otherwise we're looking to the garden wildlife to pick up the sparkles. Dormice glow and are a safer proposition than garden scorpions and glowworms and fireflies would be lovely but they don't live round these parts.