Arno Goetz’s To Be a Garden: Photographs from a Year Believing in Rogue Landscaping Practices is a book of essays and photographs about the Annex Garden Project, Goetz’s land-based installation on the Cranbrook Academy of Art campus. To create this rogue garden, Goetz worked with the institution to pause all landscaping operations in a walled garden (15’ x 80’) for 18 months. The needs of the garden were often in opposition to the needs of the institution, and Goetz photographed this relationship daily. This book brings together 275 photographs, selected from thousands of images, which are compiled for the first time to tell the complete story of the Annex Garden. With an additional essay by Cooper Holoweski, Artist-in-Residence and Head of Cranbrook’s Print Media Department, this book shares the history of Cranbrook and explores the Annex Garden project from conception to completion, all shown through Goetz’s wild, beautiful, and considered images.

To Be a Garden was designed by Chris Baker with text by Arno Goetz and Cooper Holoweski, and photographs by Arno Goetz. Printed by Conveyor Studios and published by the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2024.