Linguistically, the term Hortus Conclusus refers to an enclosed garden. Historically, in the societies of Egypt, Babylon, Mesopotamia, and Persia, makers constructed walled gardens as far back as three thousand years. The design of the medieval Hortus Conclusus is a European adaptation of their traditions.
In, The Enclosed Garden: History and Development of the Hortus Conclusus and its Reintroduction into the Present-day Urban Landscape, authors Rob Aben and Saskia de Wit describe Hortus Conclusus as a coming together of two worlds: an ‘unworldy’ ideal and that of the real landscape. “The garden gathers the landscape around itself and at the same time shuts itself off from it. It is both inside and outside simultaneously, both endless and finite.”
Aben and de Wit go on to discuss the polarity between the boundless expanse of the sea with its oceanic sense of space that one feels at the shore, and the sensation of walking on the sand with the palpability of the grains and awareness of finite place, time and moment. “In the enclosed garden this polarity emerges as its most distinctive quality: the paradox of the infinite in the finite, two extremes heightened by being present simultaneously.”
The prints in this series began with the plates from the Shape Note Geography series; images made up of one line from the state of Saxony, Germany and one from the state of Virginia, USA. The square format of these plates printed together sets up a four-quadrant composition that references a traditional Persian Paradise garden or medieval Hortus Conclusus.
The paper itself is left over from an extra set of prints produced while I was working collaboratively with a printer from Grafikwerkstatt on the Herbaria: locus series; he had printed the black images from the hamamelis virginiana plates.
I tore the paper down to a smaller size cropping out parts of them and reworking back into them. The other layered plates are from images featured in the earlier prints made while in Germany- Herbaria: locus, Fossili: motus, and Places, Days, Weather. The quarter section of the compass rose image was newly introduced  in this series, added for its cartographic reference.
When the series began in September 2009, I approached the compositions with the traditional foursquare design of the medieval Hortus Conclusus and the paths that in the Persian tradition refer to the four rivers of life. In later prints and drawings, the compositions have included more loosely arranged divisions, the addition of a large circle and varying surface treatment.