To observe a landscape is to read time — it can act as a clock, a calendar, and a navigation system. A landscape is in constant flux, and through that change we can orient ourselves. By watching the stars, the flight of a bird, or the moss on a tree, one can navigate. Similarly, natural elements like the ebb and flow of tides, shifts in colour, texture, shape, and volume of flora, or the social behaviours of fauna, can help us perceive time.
This publication focuses on the colours of trees, herbs, bushes, grasses, flowers, and weeds as a way of learning how to read time through the palette of a landscape.
The Garden Journal is the result of a study into the meteorological and astronomical rhythms of the seasons. With this project, Sanne Vaassen explores the subtle transitions that occur over the course of a year in various gardens — for example, the changes in colour, the disappearance of certain plants, or the scents that signal seasonal shifts. To record these changes, she asked several gardeners to observe and document all the colours present in their gardens throughout the year.
These collected colours form the basis for an installation, where the hues of the gardens are printed on transparent sheets and applied to windows. When sunlight shines through them, the colours radiate inward, bringing the evolving landscape from outside into the interior space.
