2014 SGF SINGAPORE

The 2014 Singapore Garden Festival

Gardens By the Bay, Singapore, August 18-24, 2014

Exhibit Title:

“Back to the Wild”

Winner:

Gold Medal

Fantasy Garden

Winner:

Best of Show

Fantasy Garden

Designed by

Michael Petrie

Installed by: Eco-scape Maintenance, Singapore

Michael Petrie wins GOLD & BEST OF SHOW at International Garden Design Competition in SINGAPORE

Handmade Garden’s owner Michael Petrie can add the word international to his award-winning garden design titles, having just won both Gold and Best of Show in Asia’s highly regarded tropical garden and flower show—the Singapore Garden Festival (SGF).

This August 2014 win comes on the heels of Petrie’s winning a Silver medal in the 2013 Gardening World Cup (GWC) in Japan last fall.

The SGF, which took place August 18-24, 2014 at Gardens By the Bay, Singapore, brought together international award-winning designers from all over the world to compete under one roof. Invited participants included recent top winners from the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in England; the Gardening World Cup in Japan, the Ellerslie International Flower Show in New Zealand; the Philadelphia Flower Show; and the SGF itself.

Petrie’s Singapore win was in the Fantasy Garden category, one of three main competitive categories in the SGF that are the star attractions at the Festival. For each category, judges can hand out Gold, Silver and Bronze medals with the overall winner being awarded with the title of Best of Show. Petrie’s garden, a 9-metre by 9-metre landscape called “Back To The Wild,” mixed recyclable materials and plants to create the impression of a modern city overrun by nature.

As a 2014 Best of Show winner, Petrie is invited to participate in the next Singapore Garden Festival which takes place in 2016.

Michael Petrie won Best of Show/Fantasy Garden at the 2014 Singapore Garden Festival for his “Back To The Wild,” exhibit, above and below.

DESCRIPTION: "Back to the Wild" is a fantasy garden inspired by past realities and a future possibility. Designer Michael Petrie has long been fascinated by how the stone monuments of ancient civilizations, such Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Machu Picchu in Peru, were eventually overrun by nature in the form of roots, trees, mosses, lichens, etc. Closer to home, in the United States, he has seen old warehouses, factories, manufacturing plants, farmhouses and mills similarly abandoned and overtaken by woods and greenery. Here, via the use of materials salvaged from nearby scrapyards, he has imagined 21st-century civilization after nature has reclaimed it. The 30-by-30 space has been divided into grids symbolizing urbanized living. Towers of recycled metal, steel, glass, paper, plastic, etc.— the detritus of contemporary civilization--form the monuments of modern society around which the forces of nature—mighty and beautiful—have created a modern ruin.