The Garden Resort

The bay that redrew the Adriatic clubbing map

When the Garden Festival had to leave Petrčane in 2012, Nick and Charlotte Colgan landed in Tisno on an old holiday camp of the state oil company INA, tucked into a cove with no neighbors. The venue, deteriorated after the war, offered a beach, accommodation, and its own bay that functions as a natural amphitheater: the sound is contained and the Adriatic enters the dance floor. Thus was born The Garden Resort, not as a street nightclub, but as a summer resort designed to live several days within the music, a walk from the bridge that connects Tisno with the island of Murter.

Three dance floors between the water, the olive trees, and the main stage

The site is articulated in three open-air stages. The Beach Stage is planted in the curve of the shore and is the place for the sunset: you dance so close to the sea that the water is part of the dance floor. In the center, the Main Stage concentrates headliners and visuals. A step away, the Olive Grove hides among olive trees and has become the fetish corner for many festival-goers. On the water, the centennial sailboat Argonaut —the boat for the boat parties since the first day in Tisno— leaves for Kornati and the Murter archipelago. The three dance floors and the decks of the boat sound with Funktion-One: Resolution 4 with F218 bass and Resolution 1 or 2 monitors on land; a compact F88 on the boat.

The festival that turned off so the venue could continue

Between 2012 and 2015, the resort was home to the Garden Festival, which closed its tenth edition so as not to bloat. Since then, The Garden Productions operates Tisno as a turnkey venue: permits, production, sound, lights, and hospitality, while external labels sign the lineup. Every July and August, Hospitality on the Beach, Love International, Terminal V, Outlook Origins, Defected Croatia, Balance, Dekmantel Selectors, and Dimensions are chained: house, disco, techno, drum and bass, and soundsystem culture, with tens of thousands of visitors per season. When the music stops at the resort, the early morning continues at Barbarella's Discotheque, the sister venue up the coast, a taxi or boat ride away.

Sleeping a step away from the booth

Apartments, mobile homes, glamping, and camping are less than two hundred meters from the beach and the dance floors. There is a shop, catering, continuous reception in season, and a mini train between the festival entrance and the center of Tisno. There is no weekly nightclub schedule: the venue opens according to the summer programming. The model that Colgan defended —contained capacity, vacation with a soundtrack, respect for the town— continues to define the place: an electronic music venue where clubbing happens in the sun, among pine trees and a bay that isolates the sound.