Digging, shovelling, sowing and growing

Growing gardens, stories and wonder
Botany Bay project, summer 2022

We are

Diggers and shovellers,

Weeders and waterers.

We are strawberry-savers

And raspberry-tasters.

(Medlock Primary School, Manchester)

 

Hurst Drive, 1

We had started with plans. There were discussions, visits to museums, to gardens, visits from storytellers, gardeners, cultural experts. Our new gardeners sowed ideas, watered imaginations, got carried away. Eventually there was earth and digging and grubby hands and seeds in pots

 

There were successes. There have been disasters. There have been slow starts and reluctant germinations, but gradually our Botany Bay gardens are taking shape. 

 

We’re proud of our team

And all our hard work

We’re proud that we can deal with our problems.

We want to start eating the food that we grow,

And we want to grow to help each other,

To help our school, to help the animals that visit us.

(Oswald Road Primary School, Manchester)

 

“BOTANY BAY is a Participation and Learning project, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.  The project makes use of the migration histories of plants and crops, and their Indigenous cultural heritage in relation to ecology and reciprocity, as a way to stimulate young people to explore new ways of living.  The Covid-19 pandemic and the climate crisis have made a re-assessment and recalibration of human relationships to the non-human an urgent necessity, and young people have to be at the heart of this process, forging a future for humanity and the planet.” (Introduction from the ORIGINS website)

 

I was one of those early visitors and this summer returned to 4 of our gardening schools. I was shown round vegetable beds, introduced to sunflowers, had a club's organic principles explained to me, sampled raspberries and commiserated with one group who had seen all their work trampled by other children at their school – not maliciously, just people who did not realise that these were seed beds and not just bare patches of earth. 

Hurst Drive sunflower

We have a garden waiting

Like an idea in the dark of the earth,

Children waiting to dig,

Seeds waiting to grow,

Dreams waiting to flower

Into a garden of wonders. 

 

Our garden will be a bright garden,

And have a beautiful blossom tree

And there will be strawberries…

Juicy strawberries,

The juiciest strawberries in all of London!

And when our strawberries are ripe and ready 

We’ll pick them and wash them and eat them.

(Cavendish Primary School, London)

 

Part of my role within the wider Botany Bay project is to help the Gardening groups build the stories of their gardens. On this trip we were looking at words: harvesting, tasting, enjoying words like strawberries. In the autumn or winter, we are planning on creating Garden Ceremonies – or Sharings or Events (we’re not quite sure what!) and the collective poems that are growing out of these sessions will feed into those occasions….

Oswald Road gardeners are also poets and artists

For now, I’d like to share some of our words and some pictures of progress with a round of applause for all our gardeners (schools are listed below!) and with many thanks to the teachers, support staff, volunteers, and simply everyone who has been helping these gardens grow!

 

In our garden

Chamomile beams a sunny smile
And garden queens grow ivy-white crowns.

The massive hearts of squash leaves

Shade their sisters from the sun

While sunflowers grow as bright as the sun and stars

And the forget-me-nots never forget us.

Here rosemary grows with frosted leaves

And chives are spicy although garlic is best.

 

We are proud of this garden and

How quickly it grows, and

How richly it flowers, and

How friendly it becomes, and

How delicious it will be.

We are proud of our garden and all it holds,

We are proud of our gardeners and all their hard work.

 

In our garden,

Everyone deserves a crown

We are proud of our garden. 

It deserves to be treated with respect and love.

(Hurst Drive Primary School, Waltham Cross)

Woven into all this digging and sowing is an awareness that when we plant a garden we are also planting stories and connecting to cultures - both our own and cultures and communities in far away places. We hope  that if we listen to the stories that belong to those people and their plants it might help us appreciate our gardens more deeply and grow those gardens more effectively. So we know we are growing stories as we grow gardens: old stories, ancient stories and brand new ones of our own.

In our garden,

We have snail-rails

And parties for bees,

Logs for woodlice

And tree-stumps for beetles...

In our garden,

We are growing a team,

Who work together,

Who help each other,

Who support each other,

Who care for this garden.

(Medlock Primary School)

With many thanks to the Botany Bay team and to our schools and their gardening teams

Cavendish Primary School, Chiswick, London

Chiswick High School, London

Hurst Drive Primary School, Waltham Cross, Herts

Medlock Primary School, Manchester

Oswald Road Primary School, Manchester