The Getty Salad Garden, an installation of organic heirloom vegetables and salad greens growing in graphically rendered raised beds, emerged on the Getty Center grounds from October 2015 to January 2016.

Presented as a three way collaboration between the landscape architecture studio Terremoto, the artist and writer Julia Sherman, and the urban agricultural garden company Farmscape, the Getty Salad Garden was conceived as a dynamic platform for conversations and education, and drew together a wide variety of creative voices.
Julia Sherman invited a range of artists and creative guests to join her in harvesting and making salads, emphasizing that the simple act of cooking together can be the catalyst for fascinating conversations and a fruitful creative exchange. Through sharing their artistic and culinary interests and the surprising ways they intersect, the conversations reveal the potential for a simple salad to invigorate our creative lives. Throughout the fall, the Getty Salad Garden served as an unexpected, playful space for culinary investigations infused with contemporary perspectives. Guests to the garden included abstract expressionist artist and Getty Landscape Designer Robert Irwin, the iconic Modernist architect Harry Gesner, Guerilla Gardener Ron Finley, and noise artist/theorist Luke Fishbeck of Lucky Dragons.

For the project, Sherman collaborated with urban gardeners Farmscape Gardens, and landscape architect David Godshall of Terremoto Landscape.
Together they designed a garden which thoughtfully responds to the powerful grid of the Getty Center’s architecture and landscape, and utilized rare seeds, including 19th-century varietals, that help preserve agricultural and culinary heritage. The garden was drip-irrigated and used dramatically less water than a lawn requires, and all materials used in the installation were re-used on site or re-purposed. 

Through student workshops, intermittent public hours, and small gatherings, the Getty Salad Garden explored the unique way gardens and landscape inherently foster community, and hopes to inspire new encounters between visitors, artists, gardeners, cooks, museum staff, and works of art.
The Getty Salad Garden
Location | The Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California
Design Firm | Terremoto Landscape
CONSULTANTS |
Artist / Programming | Julia Sherman
Planting / Maintenance | Farmscape
Getty Museum Special Programs Staff | Sarah Cooper, Cathy Carpenter, Abby Li,
Contractor | Ilan Edry of SNS Construction
Text |Â Sarah Cooper
lovely and artistic.