The Jewel

Walking through the Biodiversity garden you will find a colourful jewel under the Shade dome: it's a mosaic designed by Fiona Berrisford and Mary Visser. For the design concept they chose the cell - the basic building block of all biodiversity. It really couldn't have been more Spot On.



They started on the mosaic in May 2010, just as World Cup fever was mounting. Fiona and Mary designed and prepared most of the cell elements in the studio, and arrived with boxes and boxes of tiles, all pre-sorted according to colour. The on-site installation took just over a week.

Fiona Berrisford (left) and Mary Visser (right)

A mitochondrion: it's involved in respiration - remember?

Such detail: the subtle colours and tones

The mosaic is almost there: here it is before grouting.


And a few months after it was finished. With nucleus, ribosomes, vacuole, a Golgi apparatus, mitochondria, chloroplasts... and starch granules.

Clever and beautiful.