Our Garden

Our Garden by Ann Northrup sits only a few blocks from Mural Arts Philadelphia’s home at the Lincoln Financial Mural Arts Center. This unexpected mural blooms on a wall that stretches one block south from Mt. Vernon Street. It hides a real-life backyard garden, and blends its profusion of lush, illusionistic plants with the real kiwi vines and Pieris Andromeda, that grow in planters and window boxes nearby.

Commissioned in 2010 by a neighborhood philanthropist and patron of the arts, the 7-foot-high-by-70-foot-long mural was conceived as a gift to the neighborhood. It was finished In the fall of 2013. As the panels were mounted on the wall, passersby took notice, tourists stopped to talk and young couples began taking engagement photos in front of it. Even so, it was apparently a surprise to some, who felt their opinions had been left out. The Historical Commission was informed and a notice was sent to the wall-owner that the mural would have to be painted out because it was missing a permit. Artist and owner both felt they had done due diligence in going door to door with a petition on nearby blocks, and also thought, wrongly, that painting it onto a concrete-block and stucco wall of recent origin wouldn’t cause an issue. As it turned out, the decision hinged on whether the mural would enhance the historic streetscape. The representing lawyer noted that it resembles the Victorian gardens that were popular when the neighborhood was built, and includes native plants from Fairmount Park and the nearby New Jersey Pine Barrens. After a hearing, with many interested parties in attendance, it was decided that it would be a beautiful and historically fitting addition to the streetscape, and so it remains.

Flowers are juxtaposed with sunstruck autumn scenes. Together, they create some Fantasia-like scale changes, and as the mural slips around the corner from 21st Street onto tiny Clay Street, there appears an enormous flower, aptly named the Diana Syriacus Hibiscus. Similarly, at the surreal northern end of the mural, bedded down with some Alice in Wonderland-sized roses, a black pine with unusually long arms that feel as if they could almost reach out and touch teh viewer. Between the two, a small figure of Cupid sits under a brilliantly lit smoke-bush to string his bow, dwarfed by a life-sized Hydrangea bush, with a jewel-like intricacy.