Hope Garden notes 📝

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All new notes are now on the blog hopegarden.uk

Mon 01 Jan 2024

• Reworking website to become simple blog, for now. So rather than adding updates here, I’ll add progress to the website hopegarden.uk
• Old theme I used from GetHugoThemes was Vixcon. Might be suitable in future
• New theme is simple blog theme Bookworm. Can always copy content over to new, more complex theme if need be
• Also using TinaCMS, a simple content management system for static websites. This means easy for people to add blog entries.

Tue 28 Nov 2023

• Met Raphaelle at Naturewise forest garden in Parc Teifi, Cardigan.
• Discussed possible prototype Hope Garden in one of 2 sites
• Would like to use one site for dual use ie possibly develop into more permanent covered fire pit area. Possible to incorporate fire pit into assembly space design, with view to build on later

Sun 1 Oct 2023

In the WhatsApp group, concern over using recycled plastic benches for prototype garden, not fitting into ethics. Totally agree, I was just thinking about price. Plastic benches about £140. David Hunter (artisan roundwood craftsperson) can do them for equivalent price, in wood, slab, Larch:

Thu 28 Sep 2023

Rough costing for prototype garden

• Design £5,000
• Paths £3,000
• Fencing £1,500
• Structures £1,000
• Assembly tent £2,500
• Benches x16 @£125 = £2,000
• Plants £2,000
• Soft landscaping £3,000

Total: £20,000

Recyled plastic benches £150

Keep Wales Tidy get their benches from Second Life Products Wales

Benches £112.80 inc VAT, 16 = 1,804.80 + £168 del = £1,972.80

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Sat 12 Aug 2023

Ideas for covering

• Canvas, telegraph poles, chestnut posts
• Cheap, movable, replicable. Prob £600 all in.

CAD plan sketch of layout for assembly area

BlueGreenCymru makeshift canvas shelter

John Little by his planted telegraph pole

How canvas could cover the assembly area

Sat 5 Aug 2023

• Ideas for assemblies
  • peat free compost
  • native plants
  • rewilding
  • local materials
  • rising temperatures & ecology
  • climate justice & horticulture

Thu 3 Aug 2023

• RHS Hampton Court applications
  • Wave 1 deadline mid-September 2024
  • Wave 2 deadline late-November 2024
  • Lead time to organise assemblies November 2024 to July 2025, ie 8 months

Tue 25 Jul 2023

• Email from Trust The People 21 Jul
  • Community Assembly manual
  • Community At Work organisation, authors of Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-making
  • Slide deck for workshop

Mon 24 Jul 2023

• Visited Andrea at Yr Ardd, as possible garden
• Liz from Yr Ardd (administrator) was there, plus Martin(?) from Tir Coed and Malcolm Berry, The Dreaded Gardener
• Possibly interested in amphitheatre area, then plants dispersed
• Also, backup plans for different stages?
• Noticeboard blackboard, what’s happening, plus feedback board, have your say until the words fill up

Sun 23 July 2023

“Can gardens literally save the world? No…
Gardens can save the world by saving us. They can bring us back into contact with diversity…
Gardens as activism as surely as any art form…
Gardens that stir our senses and give us actionable faith and hope.”

~ Benjamin Vogt, A New Garden Ethic pp158

Sat 22 July 2023

• Plant a big fat Dandelion front and centre. Edible, native wild flower, great for pollinators.
• Bugle, Yarrow, Meadowsweet. I will start adding these to spreadsheet
• Cheap, repurposed agricultural water trough as central water feature? Idea is to open source plans and costings, and make garden affordable for other community projects.

• I spoke briefly with Natalie from RHS last week, she said ‘size not an issue’ at Hampton Court, so more leeway on width than 10m

Wed 19 Jul 2023

• Mailing list, alternative to Substack/MailChimp?
  • listmonk, free, self-hosted
  • PikaPods hosting $2 per month
  • Railway hosting $5 per month

Tue 18 Jul 2023

Had a good talk with Gary, with whom I’m creating the primary school garden. He suggested a technique for creating a shape in self-binding gravel. Bury rigid yet flexible drainage pipe into the gravel, tamp it down, then lift out the pipe and replace with appropriate aggregate. In the case of the school garden, this is a labyrinth. For the Hope Garden, this could be markers for the moving benches.

Clockwise from top left: Craf y Geifr, Peradyl Garwm, Penigan y Forwyn, Pani Cymreig, Bysedd y Cŵn, Triagog Coch

• Flowers for Denise XR Gardener
  • Ramsons
  • Rough Hawkbit
  • Maiden Pink
  • Welsh Poppy
  • Foxglove
  • Red Valerian
• Welsh names for plants
  • Botanic Garden Wales list
  • Wicipedia Cymraeg
  • Y Bywiadur
  • Plant-Lore, Welsh plant names
  • Welsh Academy Dictionary
• Trust The People’s Community Assembly Manual
• Hinge brackets to lock benches to ground level brackets. Pics to follow.
• Woodland path, green wall. Ivy wall, grown on relatively lightweight wire, portable. Ferns? For the shady back.
• Imperfection at the centre, like a Persian rug
• Promote diversity of species, cultures & languages
• More plant ideas
  • Honeysuckle (flowers July)
  • Hawthorn
  • Hazel (cultivar? nuts forming in July)
  • Holly (pruned?)
  • Valerian
  • Pennywort

“A designed space to foster equal communication”

A profusion of very orange Welsh Poppies, a homage to JSO!

XR Waverley & Borders newsletter

It’s really important to have hope.

Today it might feel as if we are losing the race to save ourselves. From every angle we are beset by disasters which we know are caused by climate catastrophes because of human activity.

Hope is a natural resource and we all have it. Sometimes it’s hard to find. Sometimes it’s overwhelmed by the negative things we see or experience. But it’s there, waiting for us to use it. Hope, when everyone taps into it and uses it positively, is a more powerful resource than oil and gas put together. It’s a more powerful resource that cynicism and greed. Hope drives us to action and when those two combine, great things can happen! Hope is what keeps XR rebels going. We know that by taking action against the government, fossil fuel industries and their financiers we are doing the right thing.

Mon 17 Jul 2023

Autumn plants Hydref illustration. Click for hi-res

• The People v Climate Change
• Four possible sites
  1. Naturewise Community Forest Garden, Cardigan - still waiting to hear back from Claire Turner. Ideally sited, next to the police station within walking distance of Cardigan
  2. Yr Ardd community garden, Llandysul - don’t know much about the project, think it’s in the town, I know one of the directors vaguely, strong Welsh links
  3. Meads Project, Milford Haven - early co-design stages. Bit of a trek (1 hour) for me but really interesting project using community assemblies
  4. Abergwili, Carmarthen - via Audley. Parc yr Esgob?
• Ffion Gwyn, artist using Welsh wildlife names. Appeared on Countryfile
• Public access RHS Hampton Court:

  “For gardens over 80m2, walk-through access is possible and should be specified on the application form (one-way access requires a minimum path width of 1.5m; two-way access requires a minimum path width of 2m)

The questions and framing of the questions is crucial to getting a successful outcome. If eg 2.5 hours per assembly, the rule of thumb is equal division of time between INTRO phase / DELIBERATION phase and OUTPUT / COLLATION phase.
Denise XR Gardener

So, 2½ hour assembly would have 50 minutes for intro, deliberation and collation phases.

Sun 16 Jul 2023

Footpath widths

• 0.6m — 1 adult only
• 0.9m — 2 adults just
• 0.8m — 1 pram/wheelchair only
• 1.15m — pram/wheelchair + child
• 1.2m — 2 adults comfortably
• 1.7m — 2 prams/wheelchairs comfortably

Wed 12 Jul 2023

• Brilliant meeting between Lindy, Audley and Jake, about fundraising and organisation structure. Minutes to follow.

Tue 11 Jul 2023

Rough sketch to show layout

• Invite local schools to an assembly
• Actually, use events theme for website, keep aingle page at beginning, then when get bookongs, switch on achedule and speakers/sessions
• Use single page scroll website, for when fundraising starts. Hugo scroll is the theme, demo here
• David Hunter, woodworker I’d like to use for benches thecoppiceplot.com
• Open source the plans and process
• Bilingual, backed by Welsh govt?
• Will email Jane Davidson, one of the architects of the Future Generations Act may well be interested in the project, as she apparently supports Community Assemblies.

Movable benches in assembly area, to show 2 different modes

Mon 10 Jul 2023

• Hope - built to be modular, built to be moved
• Grow it in situ, test it out first
• Guest speakers - JSO, Animal Rebellion
• Slate as building material, heritage
• Source of ‘waste’ material - brick, concrete, ceramic, sand, gravel?

Wed 5 Jul 2023

Denise chat

• Possible Senedd backing? Contact Jane Davidson
• Constraint on space 10m x 15m
• Space for furnishings to move around, to accommodate diverse needs (Radical Inclusion pillar)
• Lightweight robust movable seating. Can have it as amphitheatre, then move them to individual breakout groups:
  
• Move according to the needs of everyone being able to have clear lines of vision and hearing
• 3 phases of the assembly
  1. Intro,
  2. Breakout discussions / decision prioritisation
  3. Plenary - gather ideas & suggestions, then prioritise for sharing
• Outputs could be quantifiable outputs, measured on graph (eg Climate Anxiety Scale)
• Outputs if they are decisions and recommendations are then shared at or after the process.
• Trust The People running free online Community Assembly course in September
• XR Choosing Our Future With Community Assemblies
• Infrastructure
  • John Little approach of varied growing medium, build in complexity of habitat.
  • Infrastructure needs consideration of assembly and dis-assembly and moving to another location after RHS.
• Liaising with speakers eg
  • Dave Goulson - Bumble Bee Conservation Trust
  • Cleeve West – homeless garden creator
• Need support with facilitators and to promote training to get practice in regularly in advance
• The XR Gardeners will be pulling together a list of experts for local groups to draw on

Jake input

• Wildlife and forest garden
  • Creating habitat for wildlife, by building in structural complexity (ie nooks and crannies!) into the garden infrastructure (paths, hedging, growing material, seating, pillars etc). #
  • Diversity of native plants and wild flowers, to support larval stages of inverterbrates, as insects are the backbone of the ecosystem.
  • Growing perennial edible crops that are resilient to climate changes, which also highlights the need for agriculture to change (ie toward agroforestry, away from energy intensive farming)
• Possible topics: gardening in a climate crisis, industrialised horticulture, peat compost, native plants, perennial crops, community gardens, mass extinctions, resilient gardens, community gardens…

Hope as a working name

Had a chat with Beth, I think Hope is a better working name than Crisis.

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• Straw bale size 460mm x 355mm x 1040mm Straw Works bale standard
• Breakout rooms
• Boundary plants for lawn area
• Sign: please sit on the grass
• Boundary path
• Native grasses on different levels

Inspiration

• Lucy Hutchings, Gardeners World Live 2023 show garden instagram.com/shegrowsveg
• PoliNations, part of Unboxed 2022

Ideas

• Drinking fountain!

Name?

Better name than The Crisis Garden? Other alternatives? Forum, talk, discuss, air. No-one likes a moaner!

• Hope
• Doombusters! cf Doomster

Public access

Paths for public access on exhibits Exhibits are encouraged to be designed for public access to support the interactive nature of the area. Paths for public access must be a minimum of 1.5m wide. ~ Exhibitor Manual pp27 (Discovery)

Public access is not allowed on gardens. ~ General Regulations pp4 (Gardens)

Client’s Brief

All Gardens are required to submit a Client’s Brief with their application. The Client’s Brief will be considered during both the application and judging processes and may be changed up to three weeks before the Show opens. The form will be sent to designers to review 6 weeks prior to the show with a return date of 3 weeks prior to the show.

RHS Hampton Court info

Show Gardens are offered in three different sizes: Option A: 100sqm and larger; Option B: 50–99sqm; and Option C: 24–49sqm. With an open theme, Show Gardens allow talented designers to turn unique artistic plans into a feast for the eyes.

• Application Form
• Factsheet
• Why exhibit?
• Sign up to the mailing list
• Top tips for designers (898 kB pdf)

Garden applications

RHS Chelsea info

• Garden applications
• Garden Factsheet
• Why Exhibit
• Top tips for designers
• General Show Regulations
• Judging Criteria
• Environmental Responsibility
• Sustainability
• RHS Example Design Proposal

Gardens

• The Royal Entomological Society Garden “During the week of the show the lab will be used for real scientific research, monitoring and studying insects visiting the garden.”
• The School Food Matters Garden
• Centrepoint Garden
• Myeloma UK
• Horatio’s Garden
• A Letter from a Million Years Past