Mrs Seven Storeys Up

Recently their was a conversation on Anne Warehams ThinkinGardens site, about community gardens and why we do or dont get involved with them etc If youd like to read the thread it is here and its worth a look at. In my comment I mention a lady who I call Mrs Seven Storeys Up, mainly because that was my overriding memory of my first meeting with her.
Me "hello"
Mrs SSU "No point me being here I live seven storeys up"
Me "Well Im glad to see you. Shall we see what we might get doing today?"
Mrs SSU "We can but theres no point, I live seven storeys up"
And so the morning went on. Tea was drunk, cake was consumed, overwintered crops removed and the soil prepared and if Im honest, I never expected to see that lady at a gardening group again.

So the following week when Mrs Seven Storeys Up arrived again I decided to see how I could engage and find out a bit more about her, other than the fact she lived seven storeys up. So we disappeared into the potting shed whilst the rest of the community group did other tasks and we talked about what she might like to grow.
"Potatoes?" I asked
"Yes please-its a pain having to drag them to the seventh floor when you need enough for 6 people. At least the garden is closer than the supermarket"

6 people? So out the reality came. 5 kids, seven storeys up, from the age of 3 to 14. 4 boys, 1 girl. No outdoor space for any of them to run around in and no Dad to be seen for miles around. Little or no chance of moving without uprooting all the kids from schools and no money to move and do up a property anyway. Seemingly no way that life could change.

And yet every week Mrs Seven Storeys Up arrived at our little community group and got really stuck in. She bought a notebook and recorded everything we did. She asked pertinent questions about all sorrts of stuff that made me realise there was a lot of homework going on.
"Ive got a teeny balcony I never use as Im terrified the kids might fall off it but I could grow pots of blueberries-where do I get ericaceous soil from?"
"Those patio nectarines-do they really stay that small?"
"How do I get an allotment?"

The last one definitely got my attention in a way that made me start to wonder just how much this was actually life changing. So I took Mrs Seven Storeys Up through getting an allotment. And we got her one. And the community group went along and helped her clear it whilst we cleaned out her shed and collected a second hand polytunnel for her that was free on Gumtree.

And Mrs Seven Storeys Up started to grow. And not only started but just didnt stop. Constant texts asking if it was ok to sow this now, would it be wise to wait to sow that, could this go straight in the ground....... It was incredible. And not only that but her entire family started to work on the plot, from the tinies to the older kids, and her parents, all growing food and spending time together productively and more importantly happily as a cohesive unit.

Now some might say this all sounds a tad patronising and a bit oh my hasnt she done well. In reality what has actually happened is that the empowerment of growing food has changed this familys life in a way that is outstanding. When Mrs Seven Storeys Up first arrived at our community group she had been asked to come along by her GP who was treating her for depression following the horrors of post natal depression, and she was at the point of not being able to cope. For weeks the children went to grandparents at the weekend to give her a break from what must have been the monotony of every day life, coping alone in a city with 5 kids and very little support. In her mind there was no way out and this was just how it was going to be for ever.

When I wrote the piece on ThinkinGardens I rang Mrs Seven Storeys Up and said what I had written and asked if it was ok. To which the answer was "Yes, of course. It might make someone else do the same. You should write summat on that blog thing you do. You should do that more." And more general nagging.....
"So what," I asked, "has gardening done that has changed your life?"
"Its made me realise if I can grow a carrot in this bleedin clay, I can rule the world if I want to"
"Really?" I asked, slightly tearfully
"Yes. If I can feed my kids without having to buy rubbish veg and fruit from the supermarket, and look after chickens and have a part share in a pig( of which I knew nothing until this conversation so we may have veered off point for a moment) I can do anything. Oh and by the way Ive taken on the allotment next door that was empty and Im having a jam and chutney stand next week at the school-I bet I can make some money out of this you know"
Little known to me until recently but there is also an RHS course being taken, ("can I borrow your RHS 2 notes?") and a food hygiene certificate been taken in order that chutney and jam begin to be a viable option.

So to all the doubters about community gardens and their worth, remember Mrs Seven Storeys Up. She and many like her, up and down the country, are changing their lives by growing food and empowering themselves to change their lives.  Community gardens are extraordinary places where extraordinary things happen.

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Love for Love Square

Recently I visited Sheffield. I visited because Ron Finley, of Gangsta Gardening fame was visiting Sheffield to give a talk and Nigel Dunnett, of Pictorial Meadows fame, had alerted me to that and I had immediately booked a ticket, as I was also invited to an evening event around Guerrilla/community gardening later on in the week. This gave me the opportunity to spend 3 days in Sheffield finding out what was going on in the community sphere up there. What I didnt know was that Nigel had arranged for me to spend 3 days actually with Ron and the team, visiting several community based projects and meeting some people who in all honesty, have blown my socks off with their commitment not just to particular community projects but to the communities themselves.

Anyway, I digress a tad, and there will be further pieces about the community spaces I visited and how amazed I was by them. The point of this piece is to talk about the visit we took to a patch of land that will become Love Square.

In all cities there are pieces of land that are unseen. They are spaces people use everyday, whilst looking at their mobile phones, listening to music, thinking about a million other things, and they get walked through by people with their heads down, ignoring the environment and the space they are using on a daily basis. Standing on the site that Love Square will be in, an old bus and tram exchange in West Bar, we witnessed just that behaviour. As Ron did a piece to camera, people trundled through, heads down, barely even taking in that someone was filming there, let alone looking at the space they were using, and probably used once or twice every day due to its location as part of a transit route throught the city for pedestrians.

So the plan for Love Square is to create a space where people stop. A space that shows best practise of urban space that otherwise just becomes wilderness. A cafe in a shipping container, gardens, lawns and meadows and Grow Wild Modules filled with meadow planting and trees. A space for people to stop, breathe, socialise, read, be quiet or be loud. But mostly a space that people love and that shows people love back. A space that changes the community.

Working in Bristol on a very similar project, The Bearpit, a sixties sunken roundabout with anti social behaviour issues and a reputation it frankly rarely deserves, I have seen at first hand how this type of change of use can work, if at the moment on a far smaller scale. We recently, alongside the girls at the Bearpit Social cafe, whose home is a shipping container, planted up some bright containers with wild flowers as part of the Grow Wild project. The containers double as seating and within moments of the planting being finished the space was being used by people, sitting, meeting, drinking tea and just being. The Bearpit space is ongoing and will end up with forest garden, urban art and more businesses running from more shipping containers. A space that was avoided becoming a destination, a stop off point, a place that feels love and gives love to its community.

Both these projects are part of Kew and the National Lotterys Grow Wild campaign. The difference is that Love Square needs your vote as it is one of five projects that is in the final to win £120k in order to make its vision become reality. My belief is that in order for us to make city centres feel loved and encourage these spaces to be used and therefore kept well by the groups looking after them, these projects need to be seen as models of best practice. They are bringing biodiversity into the city centres, encouraging people to engage with nature, plants and the natural environment and ensuring that place is accessible to everyone. As more and more of us live in the urban landscape, with an estimated 70% expected to live in cities by 2050, these spaces will become more and more vital, both as green lungs but also as spaces where people can volunteer and garden themselves.

Below is a link to the Love Square site and the link to the vote will be added as soon as its live. Imagine the difference this type of planting and use of space would make to a town or city near you, and please vote for Love Square. It is, quite simply, what the future of our cities should look like.

Ron and Nigel at what will be Love Square

Imagine this land designed into a useable space.

For more info on Love Square and how it will look once the project is complete, here is the link to its webpage. Please take a look and see what an enormous difference this would make to the people of Shefield, but also to us all as we try to change our inner cities from concrete jungles to spaces that are well designed as urban landscapes. And please vote from October 7th-the decision is down to you.
Here is the link to vote

The future of our cities? Lets hope so!!

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