Category Archives: Gardens

Shedding Something

If things have been quiet here lately, it’s because we’ve been slowly, ever so slowly climbing out of an old skin, and settling into a new one. For the past 10 years we have been working and dreaming out of this half-fossilised concretion of a shed, like hermit crabs: Scuttling off to collect, make, visit, play, but always returning to shell-safety.

Sitting at the end of the long garden, behind 2 old cherry trees, an interloper fig & shaded by a sword of Damocles apple (double edged): Each year we harvested a bumper crop & the roof gained a few new holes, Sir Issac could have proved gravity’s law 10 times over if he’d been mulling on the problem under this monster Bramley.

This place was a nest, where anyone might feel enclosed in magical creative posibility – an unwitting prototype… We shared our creative space with joy & grief both, making cradle & grave. Joined by wild ivy, several generations of human friends, several generations of robins, wrens & one bold-as-brass mouse. Spiders like black stars in clusters too many to count. Strange now to see it empty, when it had been so full. To still feel the fullness & to carry it somewhere else.

Oh Shed! We love you, we miss you. Never to be be replaced. You will live again!

Growing pride

The young folks at Newtons Walk School worked hard this summer; designing, digging, sawing, hammering, fixing, building.

From a jungle of a school garden, has grown a circle of seating, a hide-away den, good friendship, teamwork, new skills, trust and pride. We’re certainly proud of them all for what they’ve done, and look forward to their ideas for what’s to come.