Like the department store, which closed in the late 1980s, nothing is permanent, a theme that greatly interests Xanthe.
"I am taking a simple form and playing with this process that there's constant change; that things are pulled down and fall down and corrode, but then new life creeps back in."
The work captures a moment in time and the relationship between architecture and plants.
"There is a beautiful tension where nature reclaims what we have tried to make permanent," she says.
"It's like a point of transition where it moves from one to the other. It's quite an important life philosophy of acceptance."
Xanthe says the work is like a personal thought: "It's the most abstract thing I have done."
For the past 20 years Xanthe has worked in landscape design, winning a string of awards in New Zealand and around the world, including the Chelsea Flower Show.
She has been appointed as the landscape advisor for Eastwood Hill Arboretum and her garden at public festival garden Pukeiti, will be unveiled this year.
Garden festival manager Lisa Ekdahl says she is delighted to have Xanthe on board for this year's Spectacular.
For many years there has been a landscape design project that's free for the public to view.
"It's been integral because it gives local audiences a chance to experience work from a landscape artist or designer that they would not normally get to see," Lisa says.
"Because we aim to push the boundaries and it's highly creative, it gives opportunities for people to grow their imaginations with what can be done with living things."
Some of the projects have subsequently been gifted to communities around Taranaki so people can enjoy them for years to come.
These include the woven elephants, which are at Brooklands Zoo, the vertical garden, which has gone to Hollard Gardens and the whale bones, based at Patea.
