Declimatize is a garden conceived as a long-term encounter with a possible future climate. Created with Sascha Pohflepp for Walk & Talk, the five-by-five-meter installation was planted in Parque Urbano de Ponta Delgada on São Miguel Island. Its plant selection responded to modeled local conditions that were hotter and drier than those at the project’s outset.

The garden drew on climate research for São Miguel using the RCP8.5 scenario, including simulations with the EC-Earth model.¹ The scenario served as a working assumption for the installation. Knowledge from climatologists, conservationists, gardeners and historians informed an experiment in giving those projected conditions a living, publicly accessible form.

The work also draws on the Azores’ history of acclimatization gardens, where plants were moved between climates as part of colonial efforts to cultivate them in new environments. Declimatize turns attention to a garden whose own climatic setting may change around it.

The installation was intended to unfold over time, placing the selected plants in a relationship with both the modeled future and the conditions they would actually encounter. Growth and survival formed part of the inquiry, including where the plants’ responses might depart from the model. The garden offered a way to consider a climate scenario alongside the uncertainties and limits of its predictions.