Blog | A Year Of Wild Colour

Week Twenty-Five: Volunteering

Mar 15

This week I have started volunteering at Leicester Print Workshop, helping to deliver a monoprinting activity for children and families as part of the Cultural Quarter Earlies. Participants painted with Akua intaglio inks onto CAD foil flower templates before putting them through the printing press. I’ve often turned to volunteering as a way of building my confidence, learning something new, and meeting new people who have similar interests. Over the last year I have also volunteered with Modern Painters New Decorators in Loughborough with the family workshops which has helped me to familiarise myself again with working in a gallery environment - something that I’ve not done for almost four years.

Monoprinting at Leicester Print Workshop

Returning to this type of work is helping me to figure out my next steps. What kind of workshops do I want to deliver in the future? In what contexts? I’m also finding that I’m starting to question what creative health might look like for children and young people. Up until now my focus has been on adults. I’m thinking about the sensory joy of getting messy and reflecting on what it means to have permission to experiment creatively and to express ourselves. I’m questioning what might be both healing and empowering to a child as well as an adult.

I’ve started to visit the allotment on a weekly basis to clear the space. I now have an entrance onto the plot that was previously a mountain of wood pieces and rubble. I’m starting to grow in confidence. It’s definitely been a process of settling in over the last month. I’ve been finding my feet and figuring out where to start. I’m beginning to realise that the upkeep of an allotment is a much about DIY as it is about gardening. I’m starting to notice signs of life on the allotment - dandelions, nettles and a Japanese honeysuckle. I’m interested in the symbolism of plants and have found the following:

Dandelions are symbols of resilience, hope, transformation and joy. They represent the ability to thrive in harsh conditions, and they symbolise strength and tenacity. Their transition from yellow flowers to white seed heads represent personal growth and change. The act of blowing dandelions symbolise the sending of wishes and dreams out into the world.

Nettles are symbols of protection, boundaries, healing and resilience.

Japanese honeysuckle symbolizes everlasting bonds and devotion.

The symbolism of plants brings me comfort. I will continue to explore what plants are growing on the plot and I will create a herbarium to document this.

Week Twenty-Four: Why Women Grow

Mar 8

Today I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival by Alice Vincent. I’ve been reflecting on my own journey into horticulture and the reasons why I’ve turned to the land and to soil. Sowing seeds have felt like setting intentions and bring a sense of wonder and hope for the future. This has helped me to refocus my mind onto the present moment and helps to prevent any ruminating thoughts about the past. This takes practice, and the more time that I spend tending to plants then the more my mind has a break from the times that have challenged me. As I am starting to clear my allotment to make way for Slow Colour Yard, I am reflecting on my experiences of community gardening and what they have taught me.

Gardening reminds me of what is beautiful in life. The sensory elements of soil and water remind me of the times I have stuck my hands into clay. Gardening is about creativity and care. It has brought a sense of safety, comfort, and freedom. It has ignited a sense of drive and ambition, bringing back aspects of my personality that had been lost for a while. A want to learn more, to try something new, to connect to the earth. Gardening is about trial and error. Purchasing plants feels like cheating to me. I like to grow my plants from seed and I am comfortable with the fact that some way work out and some may not.

As I am completing training in Social and Therapeutic Horticulture, I am reflecting on some of the soft skills that can be developed through community gardening. I am thinking about the experience of taking ownership of a raised bed to grow plants of my own choosing and how this contributed to the wider community of a garden. A place to feel grounded, to take the lead, and to make mistakes without worry. I only hope that this time next year I will be hosting seed sowing sessions for women at Slow Colour Yard, holding space for women to set their own intentions for the future.

Week Twenty-Three: Trip to Wrexham

Mar 1

This week I took a trip to Wrexham to visit Social Prescribing projects that had a focus on art and horticulture. The trip was funded by the Wales Arts, Health & Wellbeing Network as part of their ‘Go and See Micro Grants’. My first stop was the Wrexham Miners Project where I learnt about the Gresford Colliery Explosion in 1934. I attended the Art4All inclusive art group for adults with disabilities and met with Peter, a student on the MA Arts in Health programme at Wrexham University. It was interesting to learn about the social injustice and local history of Wrexham before setting off to explore the local horticulture projects within the city.

I met community gardener John who introduced me to Incredible Edible and U Are UK. Incredible Edible have transformed a couple of sites within the city centre into spaces to grow fruit, vegetables, flowers and herbs. The group have regular volunteering sessions to look after the sites and the produce is free for people passing buy to forage and take. They have even had interest from local businesses! The sites have also become a space for collaboration with local artists in the creation of murals and signs for placemaking which helps to make the spaces feel welcoming.

The U Are UK community garden can be found on the outskirts of the city and grows vegetables and herbs that are used to cook community ‘pay what you can’ meals at The Peace Kitchen in Wrexham. Members of the local community can take ownership of a raised bed to grow their own vegetables. It was interesting to learn about their ‘field to fork’ ethos and their focus on supporting the local community.

I met with Tom and Evan from Wrexham Community Gardeners who introduced me to the sites that they look after in the local Marlon Hospital grounds. This included courtyards for departments such as the Occupational Therapy team, memorial gardens and spaces that could be used by staff and patients such as the chapel courtyard. Although the gardens are not all accessible to the public, they do provide a pleasant view from the hospital onto a little pocket of nature. This made me think about research that has found that a window with a view can speed up the rate of recovery within hospitals. Tom and Evan explained that every volunteer had a different reason for helping out with the gardens, and it was a pleasure to see that they were well integrated into the hospital.

My trip helped me to focus on two themes: access and recovery. I thought about the components that make a community garden accessible - the location, the design of the space, and the welcoming nature of the people taking part. I thought about the restorative nature of horticulture and how this can aid the recovery of the volunteers that work to make these spaces so special. I thought about the benefits that these spaces bring to the wider community - whether eating the organic produce that has been lovingly grown, or whether it is being able to look out onto a pocket of paradise whilst poorly. Every person that I met on my trip was a volunteer and yet were so passionate about what they do and so welcoming and generous with the time that they gave to me. It made me think about how valuable these grassroots groups are and how important it is that they are prioritised with funding in order to sustain and continue.