Audiences at two of Cumbria’s leading cultural and heritage venues have been getting a rare opportunity to hear from a world-renowned team led by garden designer and plantsman Piet Oudolf this week, sharing their insights and impressions of the county’s coastline.

Two free talks at Muncaster Castle and Windermere Jetty Museum have seen Piet Oudolf in conversation with the filmmaker Thomas Piper and Oscar-winning sound designer Nicolas Becker. It comes after the trio spent time investigating Cumbria’s west coast as part of the preparations for a major programme of public arts works planned for next year.

Piet, Thomas, Nicolas, and producer Elena Hill were invited to the county as part of an exciting new programme called ‘Deep Time: Commissions for the Lake District Coast’, which will see them develop a design proposal for a new large-scale project set to be unveiled to the public in 2022.

‘Deep Time’ has been commissioned by Copeland Borough Council and is funded by HM Government’s Coastal Communities Fund and Sellafield Ltd’s Social Impact Fund.

The team have been visiting a range of locations between Whitehaven and Millom as part of their initial preparations and over a week, covered 40km of coast.

Piet has been a leading plantsman since the mid-1980s having created his own garden in Hummelo in the Netherlands, as well as a series of high-profile projects around the world.

This includes the famous ‘High Line’ in New York City – a stunning public park built on an elevated rail structure on Manhattan’s West Side - and the Vitra Museum in the German town of Weil am Rhein.

Piet Oudolf says, “For me, garden design isn’t just about plants, it is about emotion, atmosphere, a sense of contemplation. You try to move people with what you do; it goes deeper than what you see, it reminds you of something in the genes: nature.”

Award-winning filmmaker Thomas Piper previously worked with Piet on the documentary ‘Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf’ and is an award-winning non-fiction filmmaker, with a focus on design and contemporary art including ‘Ellsworth Kelly: Fragments’, which won the Best Film for Television award at the prestigious International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) in Montreal.

Nicolas Becker is an Oscar winning sound designer who has worked with a number of contemporary artists. He tries to find an original process for each film, putting forward a uniquely creative reasoning in order to obtain very special material, and created the Academy award-winning score for ‘Sound of Metal’.

During this week’s talks, the team have been reflecting on their time in the local Cumbrian landscape using photography, sound, and film.

They are working alongside producer Elena Hill to develop their proposal for Cumbria’s west coast as part of ‘Deep Time’ a wider public art programme being produced by Aldo Rinaldi.

Further details about ‘Deep Time’ will be unveiled in the coming weeks, with developments unfolding on a dedicated website: www.deeptime.uk.