a garden raised in object form
With Slow Dream, OF A brings a darkness botanical landscape in the Great Pavilion at the Chelsea Flower Show 2026, where the garden appears to rise from the floor as a living object. Presented from 19 to 23 May, the installation marks the second expression in the studio’s ongoing OF A GARDEN series, following Moon Garden, which debuted during Frieze London Week 2025.
OF A works on objects, environments, exhibitions and landscapes. With this series, the studio, founded by Ralu Emandi and Laura Lim Sam, treats the garden as a sculptural body.
images © Edmund Sumner
slow dream at chelsea flower show 2026
In this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, OF ASlow Dream imagines a botanical terrain shaped by combustion, growth and renewal. The blackened forms suggest volcanic matter and fertile soil, while the dense shadow-like planting moves away from the decorative display of flowers towards something closer to a landscape held in suspension.
The power of the installation lies in this tension between object and environment. Its charred surfaces carry a sense of warmth and then, while the planting appears as a silhouette, a trace and an imprint. Inside the Great Pavilion, this makes the work feel rustic before it’s floral, closer to a constructed terrain than a conventional garden pavilion.
Slow Dream imagines a botanical terrain shaped by combustion, growth and renewal
from ground level to living form
OF A describes the project as part of a wider investigation into ‘the garden as an object’. In practical terms, this means that the garden is treated as one thing with volume, edge, texture and presence. It can sit in a room, create an atmosphere and shift the viewer’s sense of scale without behaving like a miniature landscape.
There is an architectural idea running through the piece. Slow Dream transforms planting into a material system, placing botanical life in conversation with surface treatment and spatial composition. The garden becomes something that is built and grown at once, its dark palette giving the installation a compressed, almost geological weight.
blackened forms indicate volcanic matter and fertile soil
a darker reading of botanical space by a
This darkness gives the work its identity. Instead of the luminous profusion often associated with the CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW, OF A works with shadow, burn marks and metallic texture. The effect is familiar and slightly strange, as if the garden has passed through fire and entered another phase of growth.
Slow Dream also speaks to a wider shift in how gardens are read within design culture. Here, the garden becomes a cultural object, a spatial proposition and a way of thinking about transformation. A’s approach suggests that botanical environments can hold memory and mood while still operating with hardware precision.
The dense shade planting suggests a landscape held in suspension
The charred surfaces carry a sense of warmth and then, while the plantings read as a silhouette
