Swan’s Island is a small island of fishing communities with a rich history including a robust granite quarry industry around the turn of the last century. The echoes of this industry remain written on the land with a large quarry pond that has been cleaned and maintained as a community swimming hole and countless piles of discarded stone “tailings” strewn across the surrounding areas. These quarries and tailing piles are directly adjacent to the property where we built this garden. Given the difficulty in bringing materials to the site on the ferry, we decided to collect stone from the piles in the surrounding woods to build the hardscape of this project. This decision was also driven by the unique opportunity to have the materials of the project connected so closely with the surrounding landscape and cultural history, giving the project a unique sense of place.