Battlefield project started when artist Gabriella Hirst discovered a rose cultivar named after the WWI battle in France in 1916, the ‘Hell of Verdun’. The act of commemorating the loss of 300,000 lives by cultivating the plant, made Gabriella think of ways the plants unknowingly contribute to shaping narratives of war and destruction. Since 2013, when Rosa polyantha “Verdun” initiated Hirst’s interest, about 200 plant varieties named after weapons, war events and military figures, joined her collection that is (ever)growing. Her “war garden” initially planted at Tempelhofer Feld, a former Nazi airport turned community garden (at risk!), adds to the layering of historicisms planted in seeds.

For Gabriella, the analogy between the battlefield and the garden is clear. The garden is enclosed and its boundary a frontier. The gardener acts as a soldier, fending off invasive plants, keeping pest intruders at bay, preventing snail invasions, and maintaining order within the arsenal of tools. Bodies decay under biological warfare.

Clip from the lecture by Gilles Clément, From the Garden in Motion to the Third Landscape, AA, 2007

Even among plants, competition is relentless—the delicate balance between opposing forces is exhausting. How can Phlox Paniculata “Den Pobedy”, named in 2014 after a song glorifying Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany, coexist with Rosa Polyantha “Deutsches Danzig,” named in Germany in 1935 as a tribute to the annexation of Polish Danzig into the German Reich? In Battlefield, the flower becomes a statement.

Some plants in Hirst’s collection were named for marketing purposes, either to provoke or to capitalize on specific anniversaries. At times, it’s unclear whether a plant’s name reflects its physical traits or commemorates a war event. Astilbe ‘Magenta’, for example, refers to the battle of Magenta and not just its purple hue. However, each of the plants carries a unique story not only of the war but of their breeders too. Catchy as the names are, they reveal more about those who made and named them than the plants themselves, as if plants are taken hostage and appropriated to tell someone else’s story. On the other hand, creation by hybridisation and naming is almost a biblical act. 

Indirectly but loudly, the Battlefield speaks of colonisation—whether imposed through war or through cultivation, both exerting control over life forms. The words culture and cultivate share a root, and plants often carry symbolic national significance. An English Garden might feature Margaret Thatcher, Loyalist, Dunkirk, Falklands, Winston Churchill, and Friendly Fire. The U.S. garden would grow R.A.F., Marine Corps, Desert Storm, Flame Thrower and Blue Cadet. By juxtaposing those conflicting histories, Gabriella Hirst reshapes the narrative, as if performatively cultivating a ceasefire.

The matrix of cultivation—the form itself—is inherently violent, mirroring the rigidity of military command. In her 2022-23 solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Hirst cleverly used a classical Renaissance garden layout that strikes similar to a troop formation advancing onto the battlefield. The garden is now located (hopefully permanently) in the grounds of the Augustaschacht Memorial of a former National Socialist labour camp turned museum, in nearby Ohrbeck, Lower Saxony.

Not unusual to connect death to flowers.

A publication on Battlefield, where you can read more about the project was published in 2024, and is available online with K. Verlag and Antenne Press.