Organized paradise
Charles Darwin's ''On the Origin of Species'' was first published in 1859, exactly 150 years ago. This seminal work helped to popularize his metaphor for the Tree of Life, with both the established scientific community and the general public.
The tree is an elegant tool; it acts as a visual diagram for the overwhelming complexity of life on earth and provides a structure for discovering the relationships between living creatures. Today, through advancements in DNA and RNA testing, the true phylogenetic potential of this visual metaphor is being realized.
Paradise is found in the effortless way in which nature self-organizes itself. Man tries to recreate paradise by arranging nature to reflect his understanding of its ideal state.
These ideals vary from culture to culture, as do the methods by which we try to find order. Thus paradise is imagined in many forms.
Organized Paradise is a garden that seeks to visually illustrate the spectrum of life that exists in just one tiny branch of the Tree of Life. The graphic of the Angiospermae clade is overlain on the garden site and the eight major groups that make up the ''flowering plants'' fill it completely.
The name of each group is made a three dimensional backdrop for species that exist in each individual branch. The words act as: support for climbing plants, anchors for parasitic species, shade for delicate individuals, a background for water plants, and all the while, guide visitors through a dense sampling of one of nature's most differentiated clades.
The nomenclatures are strictly organized while nature grows wild.
(Competitor's text)
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