Why Gardens, Brooklyn’s Favorite Queer House Party, Is Bringing Plant Life to the Club
As Brooklyn DJs Jordan Alper and Julia Pradhan are quick to point out, plant life has flourished in queer clubs practically since the birth of house music. “It’s nothing new—Paradise Garage had a florist on staff,” Alper notes. “There are lots of wonderful queer crews bringing plant life to the club.” To wit, San Francisco DJ crew Honey Soundsystem built an entire garden around one of its raves last year; Octo Octa and Eris Drew recently erected a floral shrine at New York’s Good Room; and the Papi Juice series brings living decor to all of its Brooklyn events.
This botanical through-line is also one reason why Alper and Pradhan chose the name Gardens for their beloved queer house party series, which returns to Elsewhere in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood this weekend, though their flora has been of a more symbolic nature.
Tonight, however, Gardens will finally live up to its name with the arrival of florist Glori Ovalle. U.K. DJs Josey Rebelle and Shanti Celeste will spin alongside local talents like Enayet and Stud1nt, surrounded by her lush, almost sensual arrangements. Ovalle, who freelances under the name Glo Flo, is building her specialty in experiential set design, like the one she will debut this evening. In fact, she just returned from a show in Mexico City, where she arranged blooms within a set of speakers, and she’s worked on a few music videos, too.
For Gardens, Ovalle was inspired by the queens themselves, whose beatific energy creates, according to Alper, “points of constant, connective joy in the room.” This effervescence is captured in the series of portraits seen here of Gardens’s resident queens, HaraJuku, Zenobia, Serena Tea, Dynasty, and Panthera Lush, surrounded by vivid graffiti anthuriums and tropical cat palms. Ovalle was quite selective with her colors. She chose a yellow calla lily, for example, to perfectly match Serena Tea’s yellow wig, an on-the-fly decision that occurred on set, as creative-directed by Gardens’s resident photographer, Eric Lopez. This meticulous form of arrangement reflected the ornamentation of each queen—all self-styled, from the fit of a tangerine turtleneck to the gold dust on an eyelid—for whom self-presentation is an art form.
“We just wanted to keep it kind of minimal and let the queens themselves be the focal point, as they’re so beautiful and talented,” Ovalle says. That point of view resonates with the party’s entire mission—to create one night of pure, soulful liberation. “I think the reason why it feels like such a natural choice to bring florals to all of these dance floors is connected to why we went with the name Gardens,” Alper explains. “We’re cultivating these temporary living spaces to share and feel good and dance in.”
