Tillandsias Oníricas is an iron labyrinth proposed for the International Garden Festival in Ponte de Lima, a historic town in northern Portugal.
The proposal combines two landscape traditions. The first is that of geometrically arranged plants — Baroque hedges and living fences — here reinterpreted as overlapping vertical planes, sometimes opaque, sometimes translucent, and made of bare metal mesh or covered with vegetation. These planes intertwine and incorporate the existing hedges on the site as part of the design.
The second is the tradition of garden pergolas. From the fusion of both emerges a pergola-covered labyrinth: a hybrid space between the architectural and the organic, between the control of design and the randomness of nature.
Beneath a 20x20cm metal pergola hang vertical planes of epiphytes. The dominant plant is the “old man’s beard” (Tillandsia usneoides), a blue-grey, aerial and undulating plant native to the Americas.
The route invites visitors to experience the act of passing through and discovery — a journey where architecture and landscaping merge in a play of opacity and transparency. Dreamlike Tillandsias is a contemporary folly that interweaves epiphytes and dissolves architecture into the landscape.
Photos: João Morgado