Blue circle Garden

Conceived as an environmental sculpture, The Blue Circle Garden was a re-creation of Carole Vincent's garden in Cornwall. Colour was achieved not only with plants, but by the use of coloured concrete to form the structure, ponds, pots and sculpture. Carole is both a painter and sculptor, and has explored

the use of natural colour and texture for her sculpture and won a Royal Horticultural Society Bronze Medal. Her work frees concrete from stone imitation to a material in its own right. The highly polished surfaces reveal texture, form and colour with all the time-proven assets of concrete: flexibility of form, strength, durability and resistance to vandalism and graffiti.

Her work with concrete pigmentation has achieved remarkable success, opening new doors for architects, engineers and designers. Carole likes to work to commission for specific environments, which may range from public spaces to individual buildings and gardens.

The garden at Chelsea occupied a site 12 x 10.5m at the junction of Monument Road and Northern Road. On three levels, it incorporated two ponds and a spiral of steps. The walls defining the planting areas were of lightweight concrete blocks, rendered and painted.

Everything in the Chelsea garden was made in concrete, except the plants and the fibreglass ponds (where it would have been impractical to use concrete). Walls were capped with 250mm square slabs in dark blue or plum colour; pale blue and dark blue bricks surrounded the ponds and made the steps. The spiral steps were large slabs of plum-blue speckled concrete and the plinth tops were capped with polished slabs to make bases for the sculpture.

The sculptural element of the garden was a series of geometric solids, simple in shape but striking in colour. Three cones, two 2.1m high and one 1.4m, demonstrated the full potential of coloured concrete. On spiral steps, the colours of the cone depicted a Cornish sunset and, at the front, it was mauve with flushes of red merging into turquoise and deep blue, while a smaller cone showed how bright concrete can be.

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Kumata, to the left of the spiral steps, was a 53cm turquoise concrete sphere cut with wave forms. A 46cm sphere, in dark turquoise with swirls of red and mauve, sparkled with fibreoptic lights. Experiments with selfcompacting concrete have improved the technology of fibre-optics in concrete developed by Anthony Fanshawe with Carole Vincent for the Bude Light (CONCRETE, October 2000, pp.42-43).

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Over 20 pots and bowls were made from one mould, sectioned to provide three different forms - a 56cm-high urn, a small bowl and a 38cm-high pot. The latter, in solid form, provided the base for a table and three stools around it. The colours of the pots and bowls ranged from lime green to turquoise, blue, purple and magenta. Some were single colours, some graded from one colour to another and the large urns had horizontal waves of colour.

All the concrete work for the garden was specially made in Carole Vincent's studio in Cornwall. The concrete was a dry mix with a water/cement ratio of under 0.4, using a marble aggregate (4mm dust) with Blue Circle white cement and pigment. To this was added a waterproofing agent, a superplasticiser, metakaolin and polypropylene fibres. The mix design was a result of Carole Vincent's meticulous experiments over many years.

Judges' comments

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This small garden contained many excellent examples of coloured concrete for which Carole Vincent is well-known, with beautiful textures and finishes. The pieces were distributed throughout the 'mini-landscape' linked by granite chipping walkways and earth-retaining concrete blocks, rendered blue, to give vertical relief. The garden received considerable public interest at the time of the Chelsea Flower Show in May and the judges commend the garden as an imaginative and inspiring use of concrete on a small scale.