Floating Flower Garden: Flowers and I are of the Same Root, the Garden and I are One
teamLab (founded 2001) · 2015, installed 2021
A whole garden hangs in the air above you. More than thirteen thousand living orchids are suspended from the ceiling of a mirrored room, filling it from wall to wall in a dense, scented mass of purple, white, pink and green. As you walk in, the flowers directly above you rise out of the way, opening a dome of space around your body, and close again behind you when you move on. Other visitors are enclosed in their own domes, and when two people draw close their spaces join into one. The floor and walls are mirrors, so the garden appears to continue for ever below and beside you.
The orchids are real and alive, and looking after them is a daily job. They are epiphytes, plants that in the wild grow on trees rather than in soil and draw moisture from the air, which is why they can live suspended here without pots. Sensors track each visitor and motors raise and lower the plants in response. Stand still and the flowers slowly descend around you until you are inside the garden rather than under it. Breathe in: the scent is strongest in the morning. Look for the small differences between the varieties, and for the roots hanging free in the air.
teamLab first made a floating flower garden in 2015 and installed this large version at Planets when the garden area opened in 2021. Its long title comes from a Zen idea that the viewer and the flower are not separate things, and the mechanism makes the point physically: the garden makes room for you and closes over you as if you belonged to it. The flowers bloom, fade and are replaced, so the garden is never in exactly the same state twice.
Did You Know? The orchids are living epiphytes that need no soil, so they can hang in the air and be watered by mist.
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