In the Garden - Santa Rosa Labyrinth
Installed in 2016 by Gustav Meincke, the Santa Rosa Labyrinth is one of the defining features of the UKARIA garden. ‘One thing I always wanted to have was a labyrinth’, Ulrike says. ‘If I find a maze, I walk it – these things are just instinctual for me.’
Based on the neo-medieval Santa Rosa design by Lea Goode-Harris (1997), the UKARIA labyrinth is divided into four quadrants, blending elements of the seven-circuit classical design with the quarter and half turns of ancient medieval labyrinths. Consisting of 3,600 large oval-shaped beach pebbles, it follows a West–East direction, passing through eighteen different turning points of meditation.
‘We are always so busy we often forget to be self-aware,’ Ulrike says. ‘To walk a maze is to be totally focussed in that process, to find your way through the labyrinth of life. It is an invitation to enter a different space, to give ourselves over to it, to meditate.’