In 2010, artist Rodney LaTourelle and landscape architect Thilo Folkerts of 100 Landschaftsarchitektur joined forces to bring Jardin de la Connaissance to Quebec, Canada. The poetic installation involved hundreds of books stacked as walls, rooms, benches, and even a floor mat in a forest clearing. The purpose of the project was to demonstrate a natural cycle in returning the paper products back to nature, and allowing them to be absorbed into the environment as anchors for fungi and a humble abode for other critters. Recently, LaTourelle and Folkerts have revisited the experimental foray by helping nature along its course; they are cultivating colorful mushrooms between the leaves of the books, and encouraging moss graffiti to overtake the garden. Fans of fungi, creeping greens, and curious insects can be seen inhabiting the installation. The current progress and work is a hint of what is to come, and the imagination cannot help but envision a scene just as magnificent and verdantly alive as Alice in Wonderland’s Mushroom Forest.
