How To Cosplay Your Garden

Regular cosplay is beginner stuff.

Next level sci-fi fanatics are already geeking up their homes – and that doesn’t imply arranging their space opera Blu-Rays by mean distance of the action from planet Earth.

But giving your interior a science-fiction theme is last year’s idea. The dawn of summer 2018 and the slow, ineluctable decline of our planetary ecosystem are driving solarpunks, ecosexuals, and other tuned-in, switched-off science-wielding outsiders out into the garden.

So don’t you think it's time you appreciated the awesome complexity of the world outside your rear window and pimped your garden, geek-style?

Here’s some sci-fi and fantasy-themed examples to get you inspired.

 

Blade Runner 2049

The original Blade Runner was a design classic. Replicating the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it narrative economy of Dick’s source material in a sliver of pulpy misery, the movie added a set of visual tropes that became go-to references for all that was to come in cyberpunk, post-cyberpunk, and heck – most sci-fi movies.

Three decades later, the follow-up smudged Ridley Scott and production designer Syd Mead’s vision into in an epic, sublime ambient motion picture. And if you enjoyed sleeping through Blade Runner 2049, you’ll love relaxing among the vaporwave statues, machine-cut marble, and clinically geometric topiary of your Blade Runner garden.

 

Star Wars

The Star Wars saga has visited most forms of terrain through its interminable run, from desert, to swamp, to the salt flats of Crait. But domestic settings seem to have a tough time of it – no sooner are we introduced to an impoverished but peaceful settlement, than it is wiped out in a flurry of flames and shiny white plastic uniforms.

For the Star Wars-themed garden, then, we must turn to Naboo, the pastoral home and retreat of Anakin and Padmé. A stone campfire, bubble lamps, and clear blue water features make the aesthetic achievable today, A Long Time On from those troubled times and Right In Our Back Yard.

 

Avatar

Uber-geek and immortal Ray Kurzweil was one of the first to point out the ironies of Avatar’s nature vs. tech dichotomy. The trick, as an amateur gardener, is to pair the aesthetics of James Cameron’s freaky vision with the kit of the real here and now.

LED lights and glow-in-the-dark furniture breathe life into your garden – and the truly wired will feed those lights with solara power.

 

Lord of the Rings

From sci-fi to fantasy, you won’t need any power sockets for your Hobbit hobby. Inspired by the English dales, the Swiss hills, and the New Zealand landscape where the movies were shot, the films offer a raw and dangerous image of Rivendell.

You can contrast this with those cultural elements that find their way into the films’ production design: Art Nouveau swirls, referencing the awkward transition from romanticism to modernism that Tolkien witnessed in the world around him, and Celtic loops hinting at the underlying history of those troubled lands.

 

Alice In Wonderland

You can freestyle with this one. Do whatever you gotta do to get into a certain state of mind, and then look at the trash around you: old DVDs, clapped-out powertools, indoor furniture that no longer does what it’s supposed to – nail’em together, spray paint them, and create an upcycled dreamworld where every design piece demands a second look.