Community Voices in Bloom: Echoes of Blossom at Trerice’s Knot Garden
- The National Trust’s Trerice has collaborated with renowned sound artist Justin Wiggan and community groups to celebrate spring and blossom through a series of workshops
- Visitors can enjoy a new sound experience in Trerice’s Knot Garden
- The Echoes of Blossom ‘hanging gallery’, which has been created by Wiggan and the community groups, runs until 31 May
Visitors are invited to connect with nature at the National Trust’s Trerice, near Newquay, this May with a new sound experience that celebrates the arrival of blossom and spring in the Knot Garden.
From mid-May, scannable QR codes will feature under the apple trees in the Knot Garden at the National Trust’s Trerice, which will play the soundscapes and poetry produced in the workshops that allow visitors to hear the garden’s living essence.
Echoes of Blossom is a community-focused project led by renowned sound artist, Justin Wiggan, in collaboration with a number of community groups across Cornwall, including iSightCornwall, Gather and Grow, Newquay Orchard, Richard Lander School and Brannel School. ;
Participants were asked to write down their thoughts and feelings in response to the sounds, and these were hung in the blossom trees to form a temporary hanging gallery in the knot garden.
“Working alongside schools and disability organizations, we shaped a space where everyone could create, reflect, and connect,” says artist Justin Wiggan. The garden at Trerice became our quiet stage—a living gallery where bio-sonification revealed the hidden pulse of the trees.”
Justin uses bio-sonification technology to transform the electrical signals of plants, flowers and trees into immersive soundscapes and vibrations; the sensory experience inspired workshop participants to write down their thoughts and feelings, and these have been made into haiku poems.
“What makes this work live on is the permanence of the accessible QR code signs which are being installed throughout the Knot Garden, offering all visitors, regardless of ability, a way to experience the orchard’s stories,” Justin continues. “This project has become a living archive—open, inclusive, and rooted in community voice.”
Later in the year, a solar-powered sound bench will also be installed in the Knot Garden at Trerice, including a selection of haikus, providing a reflective place for visitors and ensuring the project’s legacy continues long after the Festival of Blossom concludes.
Festival of Blossom is supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery. Visitors can enjoy the Hanging Gallery at Trerice until 31 May, with the QR code soundscapes becoming a permanent installation.
