Maria Fernanda Cardoso is a Sydney-based Colombian artist and gardener. In 2018, she created While I Live I Grow, a project referencing the former wetlands in Green Square that sustained the first industry in the area.

The artwork, which is located at multiple sites around Green Square, is a living installation of Australian native bottle trees (Brachychiton rupestris) and grass trees (Xanthorrhoea) encircled by a spiral of sandstone blocks. –

Bottle trees are a reference to the water history on the site: they store water and, in turn, the water gives the bottle tree its shape.

”Over the next hundred years they will become magnificent gigantic living sculptures. They are an artwork that makes itself.”

When Maria Fernanda began the proposal for Where I Live I Grow, Green Square was a construction site. She wanted the work to grow with the area and its inhabitants, particularly the local children. The emphasis on the natural world reflects her belief that plants can show people possibilities and resilience by surviving drought and flood.

Maria Fernanda still makes regular visits to the site of While I Live I Grow, enjoying the public interactions the work encourages and sometimes weeding around the base of the trees. She reflects on the changing environment, too, and what it says about the natural world and what’s important in the development of urban spaces like Green Square.

‘The sandstone is changing; it’s becoming green with moss, which I love. Moss is life,’ she says. ‘We need life and life needs texture. We need texture to see the shadows of things.’

‘The stones are the stage where we can sit and watch the trees perform their growth.’

While I Live I Grow is located at Portman St in Green Square.