Kloé and Adam

making Glen

Making Glen

We visited Kloé and Adam at their beautiful house and garden in Glengarriff. An appreciation for nature is found across all the living spaces; clusters of ferns and hazel with living willow features and ponds with lilies and an incredible variety of edible trees, shrubs, and flowers. Glen was sitting under a tree with his story beside him, written on a slate, placed beside him:

“He’s big-hearted fella who grew out of gorgeous greenery in Glengarriff and loves nothing better than looking after wildlife of all shapes and sizes.

His thick jumper is full of hidden homes and tasty treats for bugs and his arms and legs gives bees and wasps a place to start a family.

Glen is having a bit of a bad hair day – ferns and twigs and balls flying in all directions, and a beard brimming with mosses. His love of luscious locks is brilliant for birds, the food and the materials to make a cozy nest!”

 

We asked Kloé to tell us about the process of making Glen:

 

“From the start Glen was the opposite of what scarecrows usually do, which is scare you! And that’s where things became a lot of fun – I love using as many natural materials as possible and we are lucky our home is surrounded by an abundance of greenery, branches, leaves, and grasses.

 

We used a terracotta pot for his head, nose and eyes made from cut branches and a living hairdo of ferns sprouting out of the pot. Fine local sheep’s wool sheared from my parent’s flock make up his soft fuzzy beard’’

 

 

He looks sturdy – how was this achieved?

 

“A large branch holds his birdfeeders and reclaimed scaffold boards gave his torso strength. His bug feeding jumper is stashed with woody materials like pine cones, twigs, rolled up cardboard, twigs, leaves – it’s a good mixture of materials for all the different types of bugs we wanted to attract.

 

We used timber and logs from our garden for his legs and arms and cut logs in which we drilled different sized holes for the bugs and hefty wire was run through the logs to pull them together.

As Glen became heavy,  we made him in components – he looked quite gruesome at this  stage – headless, armless and legless. Driving through Leap we found the perfect place for him on a stone wall facing the harbour. We put the parts together on site, in Leap, at the chosen spot, attaching the wire into his  back happily in position to feed the birds and bugs.

 

When Glen was ready, we needed the perfect spot for him. Driving through Leap we were wondering where should we put him when we passed Rita’s wall across the harbor and knew right away that would be the perfect place for Glen to stand and feed his birds and bugs”

 

Glen and his new-found family now reside in Glengariff under a tree inside the Willy Wonka inspired edible paradise – The Garden of Re-Imagination.

You can visit Glen as well as taste this magical Garden on a Taste Tour.

For more see: www.twogreenshoots.com