Tom Carney

Project Synopsis

A Garden for an Anchorite is a considered curation of landscape conditions from the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel re-scaled to the northern shore of the Abbey island. A series of granite and copper polders, sourced from adjacent quarry islands and copper mines, anchor a garden to a dynamic tidal landscape of silt flats. These polders, reclaimed field conditions in miniature, allow for the cultivation of local produce to provide for the daily needs and seasonal feasts of the Abbey refectory above.

With the setting of a new horizon cast to the ancient pilgrimage crossing of Genest to the northwest, apertures found within the island walls provide a series of cones of vision which capture specific landscape conditions from the bay, marsh land, polders, rivers, agricultural provisions and silt flats. In the Anchorite’s Garden these conditions are re-calibrated, re-stitched, folded, unfolded, cut, scaled and re-scaled as walls and walks, harbours, fields, masks and stairs, a new parterre for the Abbey mount as a rich experiential field, a distilled environmental, geographical, cultural, religious and social terrain.

Existing landscape tectonics of the bay offer models of resistance and resilience for the architectural garden. The garden harbours both a vulnerable tethering and a protected anchoring of space as places for: cultivating, dwelling, crafting, sheltering from the wind, rain and tides. The project echoes life within the bay, its historical, religious, environmental and social practices, all in a manner that welcomes the inevitable reclamation of the bay.