Magic Gardens

At first glance, the Magic Gardens in Philadelphia looks like the world’s most impossible game of Jenga. The towering jumble of brick, tile, and flea market junk travels along half a block on South Street, practically daring an errant wind gust to knock it down. Closer inspection reveals a playful, but sturdy bricolage–bricks, bicycle wheels, clay figures, and dinner plates jut from tiled cement or appear to balance on glass bottles. But really the most astonishing part is that it just keeps going.

Once through the doorway, you weave into a maze of sinuous lanes, hidden nooks, open terraces, and twisting stairwells. Even as you retrace your steps, different objects leap into view. One never reaches the end of the Magic Gardens.

There’s a personal feel throughout, with consistency of materials, folk art touches, and scrawled faces and messages that read like mantras or riddles. Artist Isaiah Zagar, who opened a folk art gallery with his wife on South Street in 1969, built the Magic Gardens on two vacant lots. Using influences from his life and travels in Peru, and drawing inspiration from LA’s Watts Towers and Woodstock’s “Mirrored Hope,” Zagar slowly cobbled together his gardens over fourteen years.

Meanwhile, the once-derelict neighborhood around the gardens revitalized. When the property owner decided to clear and sell the lots in 2002, Zagar was able to purchase them with the help of community donations. The Magic Gardens now operates as a non profit, and Zagar continues to create mosaics around Philadelphia.