Green Avant-Garde

Novalis House Sculpture Park

2011-12-21T23:50:00.000-08:00

We had the good fortune to be asked to transform a swamp land overrun with invasive plants into a wonderfully landscaped sculpture garden.
Novalis House ( www.novalishouse.org ) is a sheltered institution for people in need of special care. This park was created for them, their families, friends and care takers.
The size of the site is 11'000 square meters; the clearing of the site and implementation of the park took 7 months with a team of 9 people.
The storm water coming through the site has been directed into 4 streams with ponds through the site. Seven bridges span the streams and connect the various pathways through the park.
16 individual art pieces have been created by me for the site.
Visits are possible by appointment only. Please contact me.

MTN Vertical Garden

2010-12-24T08:07:00.000-08:00

A Vertical Garden was just finished for the staff Caffeteria court yard of the new MTN Allandale Customer Care Centre. It is 17 meters long and 3.2 meters high.

Indoor Green Wall installation in Cape Town

2010-10-13T04:03:00.001-07:00

The last few days we have been installing a green wall for a client at an exhibition in Cape Town. You can sees some pictures on my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=7538&id=100001697523766&l=0b74c7cfd5

To Create Gardens is a Marvelous Art ~

2010-04-28T04:24:00.000-07:00

To Create Gardens is a Marvelous Art ~

Possibly one of the oldest manifestations of art. I trust that my work illustrates my intentions as an artist in composing what I believe good gardens ought to be ~ spaces in which people would like to express or renew their faith or belief in finding a better way of living.

He designs his gardens with flowing, organic, free~form shapes, which he marks out and fills with plants of different use, Ornamental, herbal and medicine, using hundreds of plants to form great sweeps of color and structure, almost as if he was painting the site rather than a canvas.

As he expresses it himself, ` I paint and sculpture my gardens. Yet his gardens are not two-dimensional, for they are market by meaningful spaces, volumes and form, created by grass, ground covers, trees, shrubs, stones, rocks, gravel and man-made structures.

His wide expanses if still and moving water, mirror the reflections of the sky, which becomes a vital element of the garden`s design with the added attraction of cloud movements. Vertical shapes taking the eye upwards are of great importance to Jochen kruger~Allenstein design concept.

He will build a tall, structure like a sculpture, so that the eye is drawn upwards. Despite his almost instinctive feeling for architecture and formal arrangements of plants, he never forgets that he is dealing with living material. By contrasting their shapes~ tall against short, round against flat~ and well as their colours~ dark greens against light, gray against purple or bronze, blue against yellow, he emphasizes their difference and enhances their qualities in the compelling way of an artist.

Yet it is not only art that makes his garden unique. More importantly, it is because he knows and loves plants understands their forms, colors, flowering habits and individual qualities, as well as their needs, by growing them, that he is able to use them effortlessly as element in a composition.

Jochen kruger~Allenstein follows no rules, but is inspired by the site, the plants and the possibilities through his imagination.

Each garden he design is an entity of its own.

Green Avante-Garde's Porfolio #1

2010-04-28T04:05:00.000-07:00