Quarry Garden

For sixty years the mountain gave up marble; when the quarry closed it left a white amphitheatre of rubble. The garden does not erase this history — it edits it. Terraces follow the original cutting benches, so the town literally walks down through the strata of its own industry.

Planting is an argument for succession. Pioneer birch and nitrogen-fixing alder colonise the upper benches unaided; below, orchards and cutting gardens occupy the flat terraces where soil could be rebuilt. Nature is given direction, not instruction.

Water structures everything. The quarry floor floods each spring; a stone causeway lets visitors cross the seasonal lake, and the overflow feeds the fish ladder reconnecting the river below. The garden’s only building is a single timber shelter — the smallest possible architecture.