Peter Stuyvesant Garden c. 1936

Curator: This watercolour illustration from around 1936 is titled *Peter Stuyvesant Garden*. Editor: Immediately, I’m struck by its naive charm, it's almost childlike in its execution. Curator: That directness might belie the meticulous thought underpinning the garden design itself, it is presented as something of an ideal. There is an echo, too, of early mapmaking in its perspective. It renders, you could say, an historical construct visible. Editor: The geometric shapes forming these discrete parcels of floral architecture create this satisfying order, of course. But my eye keeps returning to those rather more playful decorative motifs, bordering the garden proper, full of plump fruit and latent abundance. Curator: It's intriguing that you draw attention to that borderline. The perimeter of this idyllic garden setting feels like an acknowledgement that all of this orderliness exists precariously. The cultivated existing within and extracted from the wild. Editor: You might argue, going further, that its medium – watercolour – speaks directly to the transient and inherently unstable character of utopian visions such as this one. Look how freely it bleeds around the boundaries! It whispers: this control, this paradise, is ultimately unreal. Curator: I feel that the way this composition deploys colour speaks more urgently about a controlled optimism; an ordering structure as the safeguard against dissolution and against nature. Editor: Maybe the charm is the way the work mediates that struggle, almost like a diagram that holds a space for nature, order, art, architecture and even humour! The image reminds us not to take utopianism, in art, life, or in the garden, too seriously! Curator: Indeed! Thank you. These layers that emerge from Stonehill's vision invite us to find something of our own in the spaces between intent and result, design and experience.