In 1983, an unconventional sculpture project arrived in London via an open-topped truck. Artist David Nash transported 83 sections of turf from Cae’n y Coed, a hillside in the Ffestiniog valley, to Kensington Gardens. This installation, titled Sod Swap, required removing an identical volume of lawn from the manicured grounds of the Serpentine Gallery to make room for the wild Welsh grassland. The work was initially born from Nash’s frustration with the art world’s tendencies, as he sought to move away from the bright red metal sculptures that were ubiquitous at the time. The sod swapping is now the subject of a new book, with twin works acquiring new relevance in a time of extinction and climate crises. According to there was a lot of “bright red metal” around in the early 80s,, Nash wryly. “I wanted to create something that didn’t need to be cleaned.”. He decided to take that back to Wales. “That became the swap, and I liked the connotation of being a sod, when he realised he would have to dig up a load of Kensington turf. Nash was anticipating a reaction and he got one. The Serpentine expected him to bring in a big wooden sculpture. And he said: ‘No, I’m going to cut up your lawn. He wanted to show who he is as a person but also what sculpture could be – it doesn’t have to be a solid object on a plinth.
Now 80, Nash recalls the project as an exercise in creative independence. He had initially proposed indoor wood sculptures, but gallery officials insisted on an outdoor contribution. Finding that previous attempts to install work in Kensington Gardens were hindered by the fact that the soil belonged to the Queen, he opted for a more subversive approach. By cutting into the pristine lawns, he created a permanent, living piece that required no maintenance. He viewed the swap as a declaration of his identity, grounding the piece in the rural landscape of north Wales from which he hailed. They came and they went”, as he puts it. “But the gallery said: ‘Oh, David, you’re an outside artist, so we’d like you to participate in the outdoor space.”, he submitted an idea of some wood sculptures for an indoor gallery because he felt too many outdoor sculptures were “like UFOs. He’d actually created an outdoor piece for a Serpentine show when he was a postgrad student at Chelsea Art School in 1970. It can be an ephemeral piece of organic material.”. The gallery planned to simply to remove the turf but, thankfully for Nash, the “archangels of art outside”, Sue Clifford and Angela King, stepped in, after the show ended. They’re stripped right back and the grass is just mown 24/7 by so many sheep.
The project sparked significant concern among local officials who feared that invasive Welsh plants might compromise the London park. Despite the tension, the swap proceeded. Eventually, the environmental arts charity Common Ground intervened to ensure the turf survived after the exhibition closed. Collaborating with ecologists, they conducted a species count that revealed a startling disparity: the Welsh sods contained 28 different varieties of flora, including wildflowers and brambles, while the Kensington samples boasted a mere three grass species.
Four decades later, photographic artist Mike Perry decided to revisit the concept with his own project, Reverse Sod Swap. In 2023, while working on a 4.9-hectare rewilding site in west Wales, he reached out to Nash for permission to restage the work. Using the original 1983 catalogue specifications—which recorded 83 sods measuring 90 by 30 centimeters—Perry fabricated wooden stretchers to transport the earth between Springfield Park in Hackney and pastureland in Pembrokeshire. Nash, who made his very outdoorsy Ash Dome and Wooden Boulder a few years before, bristled. In 2023, when Perry started a rewilding and art project on 4.9 hectares (12 acres) of farmland in west Wales, he wondered if he might revisit Nash’s concept, four decades on. Artists, curators and students made a pilgrimage to visit it, over the years. He lived in London for 20 years before moving to an old farm by the sea in north Pembrokeshire. “My parents retired down here so I’ve always been going between east London and west Wales,” he says. He was given “a really poor” plot in Springfield Park with “bad bits of soil from everywhere and a little bit of grass out of all sorts of rough material, at the London end.
The results of the modern swap have been even more telling than the original. Botanists studying the relocated turf found a striking reversal in biological fortunes compared to the 1980s data. The samples brought from London’s Springfield Park contained 39 distinct species, whereas the Welsh turf, sourced from land heavily grazed by sheep, held only four. This indicates a significant shift in the ecological health of urban versus rural environments over the last 40 years. According to the chair of the RSPB [Royal Society for the Protection of Birds], National parks are where wildlife goes to die.”.
Nash, who remains an active sculptor, views the longevity of the project and its newfound ecological significance as a meaningful bonus. He noted that while his original intent was not primarily to highlight botanical scarcity, the experiment successfully brought attention to the lack of biodiversity in urban spaces. For Perry, the process has been deeply personal, reflecting his own history of traveling between east London and west Wales. He contacted Nash, and was relieved when the sculptor gave an enthusiastic “yes”, slightly nervously.
The physical legacy of the original 1983 project is still visible today. Even after 40 years, a faint circular impression remains in the mossy grass of the original site, now punctuated by mature trees. Nash spent a decade caring for the London turf in Wales, even utilizing a secondhand mower to maintain its condition, though eventually, the daisies and other city plants gave way to the local landscape. The Reverse Sod Swap continues to serve as an evolving dialogue on land management, artistic intervention, and the shifting state of Britain’s natural environment. Eventually, after 10 years at Kenwood House, English Heritage removed the Welsh sods. “The London turf stayed in Wales,” remembers Nash. “Chestnut trees I planted grew and grew and shaded the turf, and moss came in. I kept up mowing it as if it was in London for 20 years until it was virtually all moss and then I thought I would let it go.
