This paper explores the walled garden as a therapeutic heterotopia: a bounded, working landscape in which time, labour and attention are organised differently from everyday space. Tracing a lineage from the medieval hortus conclusus - an enclosed site of contemplation, cultivation and symbolic resonance, to the contemporary artist’s studio and art school, Jennie Syson examines how creative practice unfolds within protected environments structured by repetition, seasonal rhythm and tacit knowledge. 

The paper considers how such spaces alter perception and temporality. Historically, walled gardens were sustained through cyclical practices including grafting, seed saving, hotbeds and bee husbandry which embedded ecological awareness and interdependence within daily labour. These practices are explored alongside contemporary permaculture thinking, as well as current artistic engagement with heritage contexts. The paper also reflects on how artists (both contemporary and historically) draw on folklore and myth, which frequently situate transformation within enclosed groves, hollow hills and cultivated gardens. 

The presentation is informed by Syson’s early-stage, site-based research at the working Wollaton Walled Garden in Nottingham. Although artists are not yet formally embedded within the site, this developing enquiry proposes the garden as an expanded studio in which creative practice might align more closely with ecological time and communal stewardship. Through engagement with plant-derived pigments, traditional kiln processes and the tacit knowledge of volunteer gardeners, the paper reframes artistic practice as a seasonal, care-led process that supports relational wellbeing.