What is remarkable is how quickly nerves dissipate in a new group when gardening. Warm introductions help everyone settle, whether gardeners know each other or not. It sets a tenderness and eagerness to get to know one another in a new setting. There are as many ways to make an event of introductions as Read more…
Hooray! Our garden installation is nearly ready: the plaster cast walls are being dabbed with final touches of plaster, our plants are bulking up nicely, the surprise ornaments are shouting to get out of their packaging, and the printers have run off the hospital signs. It has been a labour of love over the last Read more…
Our garden installation for ‘Taking a Turn’: mental health history of hospital gardens will be open to the public from 18 May – 5 June 2015 at Exchange Square, London EC2. The garden explores the archives of mental health hospital gardens with contemporary voices from patients at Bethlem Royal Hospital on the original site Read more…
The resourcefulness and playful spirits of gardeners overcoming physical and sensory disabilities to garden has caught my breath this Winter on a project in north London. Disability doesn’t figure much, a playful inventiveness makes gardening activities possible. Each has an independence that calls on others only when absolutely needed, whether measuring the spacing of Read more…
We’re delighted to announce the launch of our project ‘Taking a Turn’: mental health history of hospital gardens, supported by the Wellcome Trust, in partnership with the Chelsea Fringe, Chelsea Physic Garden, Kings College London, Our Autonomous Nature, and SLaM at Bethlem Hospital. It explores the mental health history of hospital gardens from Read more…
Gardening may be an anathema in dark Winter when it screams a gale and the ground is sticky wet, but, as Josephine Nuese of The Country Diary said “thinking gardening starts in Spring and ends in Autumn misses the best bit – the dreams in January”. Best snuggle into a cosy corner then, watch the Read more…
Gardening offers a rich seam of linguistic colour through its long history in rural life and sayings. Agricultural metaphors date back hundreds of years, and still continue in common parlance today. They provide a crucial crutch in gardening therapy as people make sense of illness, disability or difficulties. It may be an old gardening lore Read more…
If you remember happy idle hours pond dipping as a child you may like a fuller immersion as an adult: from Spring 2015 you could be dipping yourself into a giant pond – the first UK natural public swimming pool – in the new Kings Cross development in London. Originally conceived by Ooze Architects and Read more…
Sound is an often underrated sense in the garden. Yet bird song, rustling leaves, pitched voices, a strimmer, and in more rural parts, a moaning wind all contribute to a soundscape that firmly roots oneself outside. Next time you head out the door, pause. Take a moment to close your eyes and tune into the Read more…
It may feel like the Summer heat is a fond memory, but the garden keeps on producing a harvest deep into the coldest months. Children relish the continuing excitement of sowing seeds even in the Autumn term. Starting salad leaves, broad beans, garlic, onions, alliums, daffodils, tulips, sweet peas and strawberries are staples of the Read more…