I met Liz Ware while on a visit to Hill Close Gardens in Warwick. I had heard about her charity Silent Space, having first come across it on a visit to Beth Chatto’s gardens a couple of years ago. Perhaps the easiest way to grasp the concept is to think of the quiet carriage on the train. So it is not just that you are quiet in that space, so is everyone else around you! I was really happy that Liz agreed to seek out a bench in Hill Close gardens and chat to me about Silent Space, explaining where the idea came from and what having a silent space means for a garden and those who visit it.

Do take a look at the charity’s website to see which gardens in the UK have Silent Spaces. There is also a Silent Space in New Zealand. I think that this quote from a visitor saying “its wonderful to have permission to be silent”, is a real reflection on how busy our lives have become. If you are one of my American listeners, and welcome it is lovely to have you, you might want to also take a look at the other charity that Liz mentions: Nature Sacred.

I hope you enjoy this Offshoot episode. Since recording it with Liz, it has certainly given me pause for thought as I have walked through a park or garden, thinking twice before I reach for my phone.

Transcript

Welcome to our plant stories. Over the course of this second series we have heard people's stories about and passions for a variety of plants, from the humble radish to the majestic monkey puzzle tree. We've also heard about the work of some charities, from long-standing ones like Perennial to newer ones like Horatio's Garden.

I spent many years in the BBC working with charities, helping them to tell their stories, and I always hoped that garden charities would find their way into this podcast. They have. The Small Charitable Trust who run Hillclose Gardens in Warwick was the most recent, and it was whilst sitting in those detached Victorian gardens that I met the founder of another rather special charity. For this offshoot episode, I invite you to join us on the bench.

So I'm Liz Ware. I'm a garden writer. I'm the founder of a charity called Silent Space. So Liz, where did the idea for Silent Space come from? Well, I used to do a lot of writing about gardens and I'm a garden historian, so it was mainly historic gardens that were open to the public. And I would also take photographs when I was working, for quite a small magazine. So that meant getting to a garden really early morning to catch the light. And then I might have half an hour or so before interviewing the head gardener. So I would just wander around this beautiful space where I had no responsibility for anything, just soaking up the beauty and it gave me such a wonderful calm feeling inside that would last for the rest of the day, so that I was a really relaxed mum actually when I got home in the evening for my sons and it struck me that it was such a huge privilege to have time in a garden to just be quiet and soak up the sounds and really notice what was growing there, the hard work the gardens have put in, nature.

02:15

Because of course when we're still and silent we cause a lot less disturbance. So there's a lot of birdsong. So then I decided I'd try and find a way to make it work. So over the years I sort of hatched a bit of a plan - maybe I could set up something called Silent Space because I had a lot of contacts in gardens and it would be really simple. It wouldn't really cost anything if we used an area that was already being used by visitors then there wouldn't be an extra work for the garden team or any extra maintenance. So I had a plan but of course you know how it is, you come up with an idea and then life's busy and you do nothing about it. And it was 2015, my mum had a dementia diagnosis and all of a sudden writing to deadline got quite tricky because I never knew in advance when my parents would need my help and they live two hours away. So I thought, what can I do? I love the gardening world I work in. I don't want to lose all those contacts. What can I do that means I'm working to my own deadlines? So I thought, I know that idea I had for silent space, why don't I give that a go? So I started to talk to head gardeners and I didn't come across one who said, well, that's a silly idea, not one.

03:42

So off we went and we thought about what we were going to do. And I wasn't sure what to do about signage. But one head gardener said to me, well, we've all got A boards and blackboards on site. That wouldn't cost us anything. Why don't we just all chalk up a sign and put it at the entrance to the area we've decided to use as our silent space? So 2016, we ran a pilot and it ran for four weekends in June. It actually started on my birthday, I didn't tell anyone that, but it felt like a good sign. And to start with, we asked people on garden reception to talk to people as they went into the garden and tell them all about it. And they had a really interesting response almost everyone they spoke to said, oh, what a lovely idea, with a kind of a sinking down of their shoulders, a sigh of relief, what a lovely idea. And then would quite often go on talking about how the world was too busy and how we need places where we can just stop. So we knew we were on to a good thing, but of course that didn't tell us what happened when people were in the space, because the last thing we wanted to do was to chase around after people with feedback forms because that would destroy the whole experience. So we tied notebooks to benches. I got the idea from an organisation in the States called Nature Sacred and they tie notebooks and the whole point of the project is to tie notebooks on benches in public gardens and just let people share their thoughts. But we thought we could try that for the pilot.

05:23

So the notebooks went on the benches, and at the end of the pilot I went back to collect them. I was a bit nervous. I thought, well, we've already put quite a bit of time into this. What if people say, oh, it's a stupid idea. Why would we want to go and sit in a garden and be quiet. Oh, it was extraordinary. It was so heartwarming. People drew pictures, they wrote poems. And what was really interesting, the words they used most often were ‘thank you’. And it was thank you for all sorts of things. What was fascinating about that is that social scientists use gratitude, they ask people to express gratitude in order to measure their wellbeing. Well, we hadn't asked people to do anything. All we'd done was put up a little blackboard in front of a part of the garden that people were already visiting and said, while you're in this space, just switch off from distractions, which probably means phones, and take some quiet time to reflect. And out poured all this gratitude. One of the most interesting thank you’s was... ‘Thank you for permission to be silent’. And quite a few other visitors have said the same. That's really interesting, isn't it? Permission to be silent. Yeah. Because the world around us encourages us, well, society encourages us to keep on communicating. Even in a garden where you might think we might switch off, we don't automatically switch off. We don't automatically do it, no, because I think we're so used to just...keeping on going.

07.00

Have you watched people in gardens and if you have what have you observed? Well one of the reasons for setting it up was having observed people in gardens looking far more distracted. Gardens were getting busier and of course they have to attract more people in order to keep going, they need to financially but that means that people are always quite often doing and then of course you add in the distractions of phones. And it's as if there's no escape for people. So we're taking photographs, we're sending pictures, we're Googling what that plant is. Yes, or selfies. Selfies. Yeah. And none of that's bad, but wouldn't it be great to also have an opportunity to just switch off? How did you go about choosing the gardens? Well, initially it's ones where I had contacts because they knew me and trusted me and were prepared to give it a go. And then I looked for gardens with Quaker origins. So a couple in Cornwall, one up at Peckover, and I think that's still in what’s called Cambridgeshire. And then it got a little bit more difficult because I was sometimes cold calling. We weren't at the stage then where enough people knew about us to suggest us to other gardens or to recommend us. That did get difficult. If I could get through to a head gardener, it can be a little bit like trying to talk to a doctor there's always someone trying to stop you but sometimes just sheer fluke, I would...get through to the right person, someone would say just the very person I needed to speak, would pick up the phone and say well I don't usually answer the phone but here I am. Now of course I don't even look for gardens to join us they come to us which I guess is a good place to be really.

09:14

Do you have any favorite? Oh yes. Silent spaces? Yes. Water Perry in Oxfordshire is one of my favourites. They joined us for the pilot and been with us ever since. And in fact I was doing an interview with the head gardener Pat Havers for an article in the Garden Magazine and I don't know what made me suddenly say, I've got this idea Pat, when we finish the interview can I just talk to you about it and she instantly said, yeah, that would be perfect here. And I think this would be the perfect place for it. And they've been with us ever since. And I've been there sometimes when it's been a particularly lovely day and there are a lot of benches in this fabulous formal garden that uses their space. And every bench can be full of just people sitting quietly. And to be with other people in a beautiful place all just soaking up the beauty is very...I don't know, very bonding I think somehow. Do you have to have certain things in the space? Is seating always important? Seating is important. Yeah, we have learnt over the years what really works. So a few things we say, yes, ideally options for people, places for people to sit, more than one bench ideally, otherwise it limits the number of people who feel they can be in there. Space to walk around too, because some people just like to wander silently. Seating in shade and in sun gives people an option. Biodiverse. What do you mean by biodiverse? Plenty of planting. So not just a plain green space. Plenty of mixed interesting planting that attracts wildlife. Because as soon as we sit quietly...the wildlife appears. It might just already be there, but I don't know if you find the same thing if you stand in front of a border, you think maybe there aren't many bees here, aren't many pollinators, and if you just stand for a bit longer, you start to spot them. You get your eye in, don't you? You do get your eye in, yeah. So plenty of distraction for people really, so that they don't spiral down into overthinking, which can be a problem sometimes if you're quiet but if you're in a garden and things are moving in the breeze, birds popping around the place. People always mention that in the feedback in the notebooks, they always mention the birdsong, or the pollinators. And do you still have notebooks? We do use them. We've been doing feedback collections. I think we've done four or five this year, could be six, in different gardens and we spend the morning observing what's going on in the space and then we chat to people afterwards but all day we leave notebooks on the benches and collect them up at the end of the day and nothing's changed really we still get this amazing gratitude for the garden and the beauty and for nature.

12:22

How long do people spend in the silent space? Not as long as they think they do. We see this from observing, so you'll do some observation in the morning and then quite often the people are still in the garden and you'll talk to them as they're leaving. Oh yes, I spent about 25 minutes in there and you think, well I recorded it and it was 10, but I think...we're just not used to being quiet for long. It doesn't matter really. But in some places and some people, some people are very comfortable with it, we're all learning, aren't we? Some people are very comfortable with being quiet, yes, might stay half an hour.

13:13

What about the age profile? Mixed. Some people have said to us that, of course it's no good for us, we've got children, but some small children have been extraordinary. We were at a garden in Cornwall doing feedback collection and there was a family. I guess the children were maybe...two gardens I can think of actually. One garden, children were eight, maybe about eight and ten I would say, and when we collected them, they were in there for ages, and when we collected the notebooks at the end of the day, both children had had a page in the notebook and they'd drawn and written little things. One had said, I think it was the girl, had said...’this is such a calm place, I love it’, and the other one, had written ‘it makes me think of beautiful landscapes’. But of course, they were with their mother and their mother had said to them, we'd heard her say this, let's go and see what we do in a silent space. So it's all about how we introduce it to children. And don't expect them to be quiet for too long, you just do it for a little time. Another family, the daughter said to us, every time we come to this garden, we go to the silent space first, because we notice more in the rest of the garden afterwards. And I've had several adults who have said exactly the same thing. It looks far more magical after we've spent time in the silent space, but it was interesting that...a girl of 11 or 12 had picked up on that as well.

14:50

So this is now a charity? Yes, it became a charity in 2020. And what does that mean for it? Well, I guess it's recognizable now. People are more likely to support us, to want to be part of us. But for me, it's really helpful to have a team supporting me because when I started out I did sometimes think, well maybe I'm just completely bonkers. But maybe that's the way all interesting things start. It's an extraordinary story because it's obviously, it's over a number of years as well, so this little idea has just germinated and then has just slowly been growing, as the best things do. Has it changed your ability to be silent? I've always found that quite easy in a garden or anywhere green, woodland in particular, actually, ancient woodland. I just like...noticing and soaking things up but I'm sure it must have made me more aware in some way or deepened it for me possibly. What are your aspirations for the charity? Do you have aspirations or hopes for it going forward? Wouldn't it be wonderful if it was just normal? If all gardens everywhere...kept a space where people could be silent. It needn't be part of the charity, but wouldn't that be wonderful if this has started a recognition that there's something that's not just good for us as individuals, but possibly good for the environment too, because once we start to notice things and pay attention, there's certainly research at Derby University has showed this, we tend to care for it more. We build more of a relationship, more of a connection with it.

16:33

Just imagine if every park...had somewhere where people could be silent and it was normal and natural to think that to us. Well we do it, sort of, in everyday life anyway we say I've just got to walk around the block to clear my head so we know it but to actually sit and notice what's around us and we don't do it as much as would be good for us I think. It is the fact that you're giving permission isn't it? Yeah, seems to be. And saying also that in this space everybody else has made the same choice. Yes, yeah, yeah. And that's different to possibly just sitting on a bench when, you know, it's a bit like being in the quiet coach of the train, isn't it? You've chosen to be in that coach because you don't want to have phone calls interrupting or people being on their phone. You've made a conscious decision. Yeah, that's the way we describe it to people. Actually, when gardens want to join us, we say it's a little bit like the garden version of the quiet carriage on the train because the people are silent but the sounds of the garden and the outside world go on around us.

17:50

We've spent part of today in Hillclose Gardens in Warwick which I think are very special is this somewhere you can imagine a silent space? Yes, yes I could. It sounds as if it's loved by the local community and well used by the local community. I'm sure if they were interested we'd be very happy for them to join us. And you would just find somewhere in the garden? They would find somewhere? They would find somewhere, yes. And we could help, we could give them suggestions.

18:23

Thanks to Liz Ware, I am sure that any of the charities you have heard on Our Plant Stories will always appreciate your support. Our Plant Stories is an independent podcast presented and produced by me, Sally Flatman.