I recently caught up with one of my Mancunian friends – Jig Cochrane, the creator of Jigantics

We used to meet up for Chelsea Flower Show. I would buy the tickets and Pimms, Jig would reciprocate with band tickets and beer on the evening. It was an extremely well balanced trade off.

Since studying Geology at Oxford Poly in the late 1980’s Jig has spent his working life creating incredible willow and tissue paper puppets and giant naturally inspired installations. Filling huge scale humanitarian projects and festivals with light, joy, magical experiences and hope worldwide.2EF34EEF-8239-4549-AC9C-9F3BD0FC8C9C

The early 1990’s saw Jig working with Rise Phoenix – an arts and performance charity, which created lanterns, flowers and larger than life carnival structures filling refugee camps in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia.

Since 2007 Jig has been a leading force in the Siem Reap Giant Puppetry project and annual parade in Cambodia which has brought hope and enlightenment for hundreds of young people.

I was really interested to find out how Jigantics really started. So in Jig’s words “ The first flowers were commissioned by Sam Roddick for her mum’s memorial service as Anita loved tulips. We filled the Masonic Hall in Westminster with giant red paper tissue tulips while the great life of Anita Roddick was read out to the gathered mass. It was an emotional evening and an education for many of us as we became aware of the lives she had saved and the funding she had given to Amnesty International, Global Witnes and many many champions of good causes “

“Following on from this I was encouraged by friends to design and create more flowers – this really was the beginning of my Jigantics Life. They gradually started emerging at performances and events around London where I was based at the time.”

As a garden designer I am intrigued to find out where others take their inspiration from. Jig explained that his initially came from the “joy of making big stuff with the kids in all the years of workshopping. Secondly Anita Roddick’s memorial and thirdly the childlike joy of all the festival goers when they find themselves in fields of giant flowers towering above their heads”

As Jig said “it’s not necessarily a path I have chosen… it’s more of a path that chose me”. Which is something I truly understand as a professional gardener.

You may well have walked beneath these magically sublime, mixed media fabric and metal gigantic flower installations at festivals or the R.H.S Wisley gardens during winter without knowing who the creator was – well it’s Jig, and this year the installations will be a part of Henley Regatta and The Wisley Winter Glow and various events around the country.

For further information and design inspiration contact jig at http://www.jigantics.com