This is a public place in the belly of private Melbourne. The East Garden is located at the base of a lightwell at 101 Collins Street. The brief was to transform the previously neglected part of the ground floor lobby into a public garden accessible to all. The project was initiated by 101 Collins during the pandemic as a way of acknowledging the need for a post-COVID workplace that was kind, inviting and that allowed proximity to air, social distance and the positive distraction of the biophilic. An existing slab void hosts new soil and new planting, designed to thrive in a low-light environment. A series of solid bluestone seating nooks are carved from this central forest and interspersed with slices of Philip Johnson’s Tuscan columns, salvaged from the adjacent foyer renovation. By increasing the diversity, colour, texture, and sensory stimulus of planting in the East Garden, the project becomes a space for surrender and escape from the everyday, a place to recharge and step away from normal behaviours. As visitors walk through the garden, they slow down, hear timber under foot, see leaves swaying in the wind, smell earth and humidity and accept the invitation to pause and explore the detail around them. The East Garden shows ways in which static and underutilised places can be charged and given new life using landscape as a way of claiming space and creating invitation.­