The garden is defined by a mirror corridor which creates two opposing conditions. The corridor path contains 11 plane trees, which are reflected by the ‘barbershop effect’ of the mirror walls.  The line of plane trees appears to multiply into a vast gridded orchard. The cobble path becomes a datum that extends endlessly into the deep space of the mirrors.

The exterior of the mirror path presents an opposing condition to the expansive infinity of the interior. The parterres, half-circles in plan, are completed as uninterrupted circles in the mirror. A viewer circling the parterres discovers two rows of slender poplars which create a secondary axis perpendicular to the Sycamores. In the mirror walls a puzzling alley forms across the circles of the parterre. The treetops of the opposite parterre mysteriously complete the images of the trunks in the mirror.

The Finite/Infinite Garden recalls Peter Walker’s early landscape experimentations, aimed at finding minimalist expression for the landscape. Walker workshopped in BAM’s Beijing studio using mirrors and model trees to outline fundamentals of the design. BAM carried the design forward through further model studies, detail mock-ups, construction drawings, and construction observation.