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Dalston Flower Show for Chelsea Fringe 2015: Herbal Health Bar launch

Saturday 30 & Sunday 31 May 2015, 2-6pm

Visitors on the weekend of 30 & 31 May will be able to step into a herbal paradise with the launch of a ‘Herbal Health Bar’ for the Chelsea Fringe Festival. Herbalists and artists from East London’s ‘Gone Wild Herbs’ collective will be taking up summer residency at the Garden and on the launch weekend visitors will be able to take part in free herb walks, learn how to make herbal preparations, enjoy tastings, plant seeds, and share herbal stories
Hackney Artist Steph Wehowski will be transforming the Garden’s greenhouse into the Herbal Health Bar and throughout the weekend the collective will be available to discuss herbs and health, and the Health Bar will have tea blends, massage oils, balms, cough syrups, fresh herb teas and smoothies available to buy.

‘Hackney Herbal’, which this year is aiming to grow herbs at different sites all over the borough to create a herbal tea blend, will also be taking part in the Herbal Health Bar launch weekend and visitors will be able to buy herb-infused cakes and botanical cocktails from the Garden café.

Natura Morta – artist’s pop-up for Chelsea Fringe

Saturday 23 & Sunday 24 May 2015

Artist Erola Arcalís presents ‘Natura Morta’ for the first time in a temporary installation at the Garden.

Erola’s work focuses on human’s representation of nature. Taking plants as the main subject of interest, her practice makes use of the photographic still life language. Yet, the very idea of this language is questioned by capturing the subjects while still alive.

She says: “I find in the perennial and fragile conditions of plants the potential to build a new perception of the real. By the manipulation of the subject, I aim to objectify and explore the meaning of the being‘

Erola stages and puts the plant in an artificial context, reinterpreting its essential atributes. The physical intervention responds at the same time to a will to satisfy and experience a certain ideal image.