An audio accompaniment to remembrance & reflection

The Circle of Life Garden is Ireland's national organ donor commemorative garden. Located on Salthill seafront in Galway, it is a really special place, with a sense of loving calm that pervades all the many carved stones, and beautiful plants, trees, water features and paths.

It's a place with an important purpose, so I was absolutely honoured to be asked by Martina and Denis of Strange Boat Donor Foundation to create a site-specific audio piece for the garden.

The piece features voices, sounds and music, all telling the story of this special garden, why it is there and what people find there.

Visitors scan stone-carved QR codes with their own phone, and listen using their own earphones.

We worked together on scripting their narration, which doesn’t aim to be a guided tour, but more to tell the garden’s story while complementing the reflective atmosphere there.

It includes contributions from an organ donation nurse manager and a volunteer gardener, as well as the locally recorded soundscape, and music from the Waterboys, Eleanor Shanley and friends, and Charlie Lennon.

If you've never paid a visit to this unique public garden, you now have another reason to go. Take your smartphone and earbuds down to Salthill one day and check it out – simply scan the QR code at either of the entrances, carved into limestone by Réamonn Flaherty.