The Grow Dome lives on: On stepping into leadership and the value of a kick-ass partner-in-crime!
A week ago I coordinated the build of the ‘Grow Dome’ at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen. The Grow Dome - an urban vertical garden - has a rich history beginning in 2020 but it first really came to life as part of an art installation I was commissioned to make for the Aberdeen Performing Arts Wonderland Festival in 2022.
To compile the installation, entitled “Nice Day, Isn’t It?”, I wrote and recorded 4 new songs which form one cohesive soundscape that visitors heard as they wandered around and inside the vertical garden. Craig Barrowman, who was at the time working for Gray’s Mobile Art School cut the pieces to make the Grow Dome using a CNC Machine and the size specifications provided by Space 10’s open source ‘Growroom’ design, and he and I - with some help from friends! - erected the Grow Dome in an empty shop unit in the City Centre (but not before Craig constructed an adorable little prototype about 1% of the size of the final product and gifted it to me! This still holds pride of place on my windowsill.). Invaluable support and essential materials for this project were provided by CFINE.
Getting ready for Wonderland: Me sitting inside the Grow Dome with many plants laid out ready to go in the vertical garden. Photo by Julian Maunder.
In 2025 I worked with CFINE to identify the best candidate to provide a permanent, loving home for the Grow Dome. To do this, we created a series of questions for organisations interested in ‘adopting’ the Grow Dome which ranged from the practical - where would it be housed? can you care for it long term? - to the reflective - would the location be a suitable future storyteller for the Grow Dome’s legacy?
I am over the moon about our final decision to donate the Grow Dome to the James Hutton Institute (JHI), who provide a highly visible location in their brand new Hutton Hub Café, which will support public engagement with the growing structure.
It’s not only the visibility that made JHI the right fit though! I absolutely loved the idea they presented that their in-house research ecologists would plan what to plant, integrating elements from their collections! Whilst their research is conducted in controlled environments, some examples of their work can be displayed in the public space that the Grow Dome inhabits. This may or may not include varieties from the Commonwealth Potato Collection, which, for some reason, has me the most excited of all!
So that’s how it was that last week, in the middle of a wet, wild and windy January, I spent a thoroughly enjoyable day coordinating the rebuild of the Grow Dome in its new home.
A new home for the Grow Dome! Here I am with some of the team who helped to rebuild the Grow Dome in its ‘forever home’ at the Hutton Hub Cafe, James Hutton Institute
Prof Lee-Ann Sutherland, the wonderfully organised and proactive Director of International Land Use Study Centre at JHI, has been my main contact in this scheme to relocate the Grow Dome, and it’s been a pleasure due to her enthusiasm and can-do attitude! She gathered a team of people for the construction day. JHI researchers and estates team members were joined by myself and my fiancée, Alex, and we all donned our work gloves and mallets!
Lee-Ann made it clear on my arrival that I was the expert on the build and that I would be coordinating things. Rather than this leaving me feeling stressed or pressured, it had the opposite effect. It allowed me to step into my role, allowed the team to look to an identified person (me) for oversight and instruction on the build, and I felt the experience I brought to the table was being made proper use of. The fact that I felt confident stepping into this role feels like a personal achievement, and shows me that everything I’ve been doing to improve my self-esteem and make my voice heard is paying off!
Alex proved to be an extremely valuable member of our ad hoc construction team. Not only did he have the experience, having been there to help with the original build in 2022, and on subsequent builds, he also took the most beautiful attitude to his role in the team and as my ‘partner-in-crime’. Let me try and explain what I mean. Alex has the most incredible way of believing in me no matter what. On my crabby days, on my sad days, when I’m at my most prickly, or at my most unsure of myself, I am consistently amazed by the way he will see my absolute best self and reflect it back to me in the most tender way. If I had any hesitations about taking on my role as ‘expert’ or ‘coordinator’ on the Grow Dome build, his presence and attitude put paid to that.
It’s not a criticism of any one person, but really of our society, that a woman’s voice, especially pertaining to building and construction related topics, is more readily dismissed, despite any expertise she may have. I observed with interest that the more Alex deferred to me, the more the group followed his lead and did the same.
I acknowledge that the group’s reaction to me was probably not solely due to my gender. I expect that, as an outsider to their workplace where everyone has established dynamics with their co-workers, there was a certain amount of testing to see whether I was a trusted coordinator. For example, at the beginning of the day’s work I told the group that each segment of the first layer should be secured with 2 pegs and I was met with ‘2 pegs don’t fit’. I said that two pegs do fit, which was met with repeated responses of ‘2 pegs don’t fit!’. It was only once the first, and part of the second, layer was laid and the wobble and misalignment of the work was pointed out by someone, that they finally listened when I said ‘the structural integrity counts on the foundation of 2 pegs per segment’. The group then proceeded to disassemble everything and start again using the 2 peg system and they found that - amazingly! - 2 pegs do, indeed, fit! As frustrating as this process was, there is a certain satisfaction to being proven right, and I like to think that this contributed to the group learning that they could trust me and my judgement. Things seemed to smooth out after this, and the team more readily trusted my further advice!
Lee-Ann and Alex commencing on the 5th layer of the vertical garden at the Hutton Hub Café, James Hutton Institute
I am over the moon that the Grow Dome is in a location where it will be cared for, tended to, and planted by some of the best in their field with interesting species you may not see elsewhere. The installation will benefit from CFINE’s community links, rooted in Aberdeen’s priority communities. I dearly hope it will become the destination for many educational visits from schools and community groups, including CFINE’s gardening project participants. Sarah Cockburn, CFINE’s Marketing and PR Officer, has done a wonderful job at representing the story of the Grow Dome on the CFINE website, which includes information about how to enquire about booking an educational visit.
This ties perfectly into what JHI are imagining for the new Hutton Hub:
“Our new Hutton Hub is a capacity building and engagement centre, specifically designed to help us do more engagement with schools and community groups. Our open science café is open to the public, and we are already hosting regular student visits to the hub development, to showcase sustainable construction practices. We are also developing our work on outdoor learning, with plans for an outdoor engagement centre. ”
It is also a huge privilege and honour for me to be credited - along with a QR code to the soundscape I created - on a sign which is to be installed next to the Grow Dome and seen by a good number of people - JHI staff and café visitors alike. This means that visitors have the option to experience the Grow Dome as intended in my original art installation - listening to the soundscape whilst seated inside a little green oasis, surrounded on all sides by plants.
To experience the Grow Dome as the interactive and multi-sensory experience it’s designed to be, I recommend taking a few moments seated inside, taking some deep breaths while you take in the scents and sights of the greenery. Bring your headphones to access the sounds of the music I wrote for this pocket of nature in the city.
A biophilic design in progress: The Grow Dome at The Hutton Hub, James Hutton Institute
While we had to turn down the submissions of the other organisations who were interested in adopting the Grow Dome, we plan to invite them, alongside stakeholders and community garden groups, to a launch event at JHI, to mark the installation of the Grow Dome. I am hopeful this event will come to pass, but first off, the JHI team of ecologists still need to get their hands on this unique vertical garden!
JHI have started exploring the necessary lighting and irrigation required to support the Grow Dome’s long-term existence.
“Its going to be a fun challenge for our plant scientists to determine which of our varietals will grow well together (some require more or less water, light etc, so there will be some experimentation). ”
JHI hope to use the produce harvested from the Grow Dome in their Hutton Hub café - it couldn’t be more easily accessible, being located in the café itself!
I’m hopeful that the JHI team will share their valuable learning with me about what they grow in the structure; what works well, what doesn’t, and how the produce is used.
The Grow Dome’s first ever appearance, at Wonderland Festival 2022. What will it look like in its new home, with new and different plants in it?
After the hard day’s work constructing the Grow Dome last week, I am sure that everyone involved hopes that the structure has now found its forever home at JHI and can stay where it is for a good long time to come!
Personally, I am beyond delighted that the Grow Dome lives on! I look forward to its new chapter housed in the innovative new Hutton Hub, where visitors can also take in not only their lunch at the café but a state of the art immersion suite and VR head sets!
