Charles Darwin saw the war of nature as a fundamental truth that drives natural selection, and statesmen from Hobbes to Churchill have seen human war as an eternal condition. Whatever the truth of this prediction, war causes chaos, particularly today among civilian populations. Agamemnon’s Curse, the tit-for-tat response that locks in species to perpetual warfare, also blights generations of people who must avenge a deed or ritually attack an adversary. This interactive water garden pulls in the visitor to witness, and take part in, this curse of nature and culture. It shows how chaos and entropy can nevertheless lead to new orders and occasional beauty, emergent growths and new colourful combinations.

The visitor enters on wooden decking that curves across the shallow water and sees to the right a high point. This is the symbolic source of wealth and dispute, a V-shaped cistern with exit spouts to either side. The one to the left spills onto a Waterwheel. It is set a-centrically so that it moves in chaotic motion and creates pulsating optical illusions. Water, the source of life and power, is seen to cause sudden bursts and flares, explosive visual reactions that portend the role of water in war and in this garden.

To the right, the spout of the V-cistern falls into a sequence of six galvanised metal spouts that, pivoting chaotically as water passes over them, give off an a-periodic drum beat. These Drums of War fill up with water, tip over and then fall back on top of reverberant metal cylinders of different shape and sound. Since the water flows through this sequence in a regular but somewhat random manner the musical beat is like syncopated machine-gun fire: ratta-tat-tat.

Proceeding on this large curved segment, one sees two of the five Gunnera Flares. The life-cycle of this water plant (Gunnera manicata) is shown in various of its stages of life and death, flaring out from a growing specimen. The dead and rotting elements are set on top of curved metal mesh that undulates in self-similar shapes. This formal pattern relates to the three large chaotic attractors, or strange attractors, that create the grammar of the garden. The Gunnera Flares vary from more ordered to more chaotic in the way they are stacked and the stage of decomposition.

The rust-red wooden decking, and major route, is the first chaotic attractor that leads to different interactive war games. In the middle of the decking are Two Waterpults. These are two catapults throwing water at each other, incidentally hitting the porous moss-covered rocks behind and helping them grow (and perhaps Soleirolia, groundcover). The way these Waterpults fill with water and suddenly release it is both determined by the constant input (a forceful rush of water through a hosepipe) and made random by the initial conditions and the unpredictable interactions. Thus tit-for-tat, “deterministic chaos”, the curse of many parts of the world today.

Then, at the head of the strange attractor, the visitor can take part in the Superpower Settlement. Here a series of five hoses can be aimed at three Living Boats, that is, small floating vessels with water shields on two sides to protect the growing species, and plastic flowers laid like a living corpse. In one boat are mixed varieties of Candelabra Primulas in reds and yellows in as long a flowering season as possible; in another boat Dicentra spectabilis alba; another boat Salvia Patens and Salvia Patens Cambridge Blue and artificial flowers. The force of the water hose guides the boats as if the wind (water) were pushing against sails (the shields). The game of superpower control is to aim a stream at these boats (perhaps two superpower-hoses would work in conjunction, or strategic alliance) thus forcing the satellites to get back in their place. Their pigeonhole is two harbours of similar species, colour and shape. While this ordering of bouncing, chaotic boats is possible, once they are pushed inside their harbour and left alone (in order for a superpower to concentrate on another satellite) they tend to float away and drift towards freedom. The jets of water coming from the five hoses again bring new chaotic life to the species growing in the harbours behind, and the gunnera further back.

Threaded through the wooden decking are two other strange attractors. The larger one, coming from the gunnera under the V-cistern, is made from metal channels with different low-growing water weed floating: duck weed, algae, Aponogeton distachyos (cape pond-weed), Azolla caroliniana (waterfern), Nymphaea (water lily), Trapa natans (water chestnut), etc. Their flares follow the self-similar curves that sometimes reveal water between the channels. The third chaotic attractor, made from coloured metal channels placed deeper in the water, visually connects elements and it ends in a small curved dish.

Lettering on the walkway in red identifies the Superpowers (USA, Espagne, Grand Bretagne etc.), the tit-for-tat (Israel and Palestine) and various themes, such as La Vie – Le Grand Ordonateur, La Mort – Le Grand Désordre (the dead Gunnera cones) and those Presidential-kings (Les Bushs – Voodoo Bush Pere, et bush tres petit, a dangerous, prickly bush).

Harmonious and self-similar curves are woven through each other, the destructive-creation that can result in regeneration and beauty, at least partial consolation for the curse of war.

(nb. Planting and materials were not always carried out as specified here)

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