The Harvest Garden - 2009

Project: What Will The Harvest Be? - The Harvest Garden Proposal

Next growing season (March – October) we propose to use the site for a unique productive garden inspired by the iconic image of the Plaistow Landgrabbers, an unemployed group that squatted and cultivated a nearby plot as a political act. The graffiti depicted in an archive portrait has inspired the project’s title, and the ‘What will the harvest be?’ slogan will be painted on the South facing wall of the gardens during 2009.

The site will be divided diagonally into 4 different triangles with the ‘front’ triangle being a grassed leisure area around the ruins. In the remaining three triangles, raised beds and paths will be installed in a formal layout adjacent to the central axis of the garden. A mixture of fruit & vegetables, annual flowers for cutting and perennials for use within the final permanent garden scheme will be sown and planted in the raised beds.
Garden activity will be led by a garden club supervisor recruited to lead bi-weekly drop-in community gardening sessions, and to provide continuity to the care of the site. (It is expected that some maintenance can also be provided by the Council - e.g. grass cutting, mulching).

The garden’s concept is inclusive – the design’s formality can accommodate thousands of diverse plants as well as the vagaries of beginners’ horticultural skill and tastes. People contributing to the garden will be welcome to harvest produce and negotiate how this will happen amongst themselves – this social interaction must happen for real, and is a crucial part of developing strategies for long-term community involvement at the site.

A shed structure on site will provide a small base for volunteers, who will be encouraged to record and photograph their activities both in a Garden Book on site and in a blog/plant database. This documentation is an important part of the legacy of this transient stage of the project, but will also inform a labeling/interpretation system we would like to develop for the permanent garden – one that is less focused on Latin plant names and more on historic or personal stories and significant facts relating to the plants.
In addition we will design and build a robust ‘honesty stall’ (an unregulated shop) into the garden perimeter for people to buy the site’s flowers and produce. The stall is designed to provoke discussion and thinking about the developing role of the local community at the site. It may generate a small amount of income but will be deployed mainly to raise interest locally.

This Harvest Garden will create a fast, 'big impression’ and stimulate involvement with the site by its generosity and optimism. There are many such gardens privately of course, but no comparable community project has been initiated. The FOAG involvement in this phase will be crucial, as well as developing the wider network of potential gardeners/users (inc. allotment waiting lists).

In brief, the objectives of The Harvest Garden are:

• To attract community and media interest, and possibly financial support in the development of the project
• To offer informal hands-on gardening training free to all and thus support a group who may nurture the permanent garden
• To propagate young plants and generate seed for the permanent garden scheme
• To offer a test bed for community and FOAG engagement on site, where social events can be hosted and knowledge shared
• To build up a blog and on-line plant database that documents the garden’s development and engages a wider audience with the project

Click here if you would like to download a pdf of the A1 plans (6.6 MB) for this phase of the garden (tiny version on the right)