Dacha MEadow at Pushkin House

Pushkin House’s Dacha Meadow landscape art project is about reintroducing nature to the city. It is our humble artistic commentary on climate change and an attempt to reconnect with wildlife. But it is also a lot more than that.

The species of steppe and meadow plants lovingly selected for our Bloomsbury entrance evoke nostalgic memories of childhood, of care-free summers, as well as the fading world of comfort and biodiversity. As such they carry a bittersweet sentiment of loss and longing but also of comfort and belonging in the heart of a stone and concrete jungle that is the London city centre. Here you will find the all-familiar Anthemis tinctoria, Allium senescens, Achillea ptarmica, Linaria, a versatile collection of plants that together form our very own mini meadow. You will also find such plants as Philadelphus coronarius (mock orange) and Cosmos bipinnatus that were chosen as nostalgic plants that many of us are familiar with from our (dacha) childhood.

The project is curated by planting and garden designer Anna Andreeva known for her naturalistic planting design approach. Anna designs planting schemes for London public realm and residential projects. Anna's past projects include a vegetable garden for the iconic house of Russian modernist architect Konstantin Melnikov inspired by the museum's archives, a kilometre-long park in Krymskaya Embankment in the heart of Moscow and The Edible Garden for the Chaumont-sur-Loire Festival in France. Her interest in planting started at an early age and is inspired by her family’s dacha, a traditional Russian country house and garden. She is currently working on a PhD at the University of Sheffield, where her research focuses on sustainable planting communities for green roofs based on the steppe vegetation of Eurasia.