A Happy Pug

I took a photo of Pig the Pug this week in the Museum of Homelessness garden. The Dalefoot Compost delivery (with thanks for their support) came last Friday. The lorry driver was a little puzzled on how to get his delivery to the museum in Finsbury Park but security was negotiated (man in car on one of the gates) and here is the pile of compost …with Pig.

Pig the Pug

Suddenly all the work that has gone on over the past few months came together. Here was the compost to spread on the veg beds that Taffy has been building. The weeds had been stripped off the top of the new beds, the concrete post had been dug out and the cardboard had been laid. I am sure that the Spring sunshine helped but that combined with the compost seemed to lead to palpable joy.

On the basis that you should only plant what you love - remember the advice of Philippa’s mother in law (otherwise it will languish and die in a corner and you will feel wretched) - there are now potatoes and pumpkins in the soil. Working in a community garden I feel is a very different experience to working in your own patch, however large or small that may be. You realise that a garden, a raised veg bed, a plant pot, can mean very different but deeply held things to different people. You may not understand the reason why someone wants to grow a particular vegetable or flower and maybe sometimes they couldn’t exactly tell you why themselves but that is what they want to sow and nurture and watch and hopefully harvest and that hope is crucial.

This involves some negotiating sometimes because not everyone will love everyone else’s plants and perhaps we all have a vision in our heads of what the garden will look like. For some that means a place of order, for others its a bit of wilderness. For myself I have found I am a bit passionate about the sweetpea seeds we planted back in November. In truth we planted them just because we wanted to see something growing in the depths of Winter. And seeing those tiny green shoots emerge and then building a makeshift coldframe around them to protect them through the worst of the weather means you are invested. So next week I hope to plant them out in a little triangle of sunshine that Jess has identified by the greenhouse.

One of her worries was that we could get carried away and plant more seeds than we can take care of. It is a risk. Most of us who have planted seeds know that risk well. You start off with a small pot of seedlings and before you know it you are caring for 20 plants that are moving up through the pot sizes and you no longer have any space on your windowsill…worktop….kitchen table! However I suggested that if we do have too many then maybe we can give them away to good homes for a small donation of whatever size, that can go back into the museum …or a seed fund!

As I have found over and over again with the Our Plant Stories podcast, these plants transport us back to other times in our lives and over and over again in the garden I am watching as those deep memories re-emerge. Sometimes they seem to be good ones; gardening alongside parents. But I have also seen people digging and recalling how that was something they did when they were in foster care or in a young offenders institute and watching, I can see that that is a difficult memory. Assuming everyone learned to garden at home with family is an assumption you mustn’t make.

However hopefully in the MOH garden we can all make new memories, sharing in the joy of watching something grow. Not everything will work but all the wonderful growers and horticulturalists I have spoken to for the podcast say you learn from when things don’t work so not to worry too much. Healing by growing is the subject of this weeks episode with Kathy Slack. It is a conversation about her recently published book Rough Patch - How a year in the garden brought me back to life. You can listen here. Kathy is a great story teller and I particularly like the story of Mr Brown’s cow. I think it is a good example of how to work alongside each other in a garden.

I mentioned last week that I have a signed copy of the book to give away and I am going to pick out (of a hat!) a name of someone who has joined the coffee crew or plant plugs to support the podcast. Kate my friend who prompted me recently to better explain what buy me a coffee actually means is now part of that coffee crew - THANKS Kate! But you too can join and someone will win Kathy’s lovely book next week.

Have a lovely weekend

Sally

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