Battersea Redevelopment Photo Gallery
Our photo gallery shows the work on the new glasshouse in the Herb Garden as well as the rest of the Battersea Garden Project. Also, Susan Stuart, Garden Manager, tells us all about the redevelopment in a new blog.
Susan Stuart's Battersea Blog
- August 2008
Since I last wrote, we have selected three finalists for our garden design competition - Vanessa Adorni (Capel Manor), Alyson Hamilton (English Gardening School) and Sarah Price (Oxford School of Garden Design). It was great fun but very challenging to choose just three from such an amazing selection of entries. Our three finalists now have to put together a detailed design for the users and judging panel to select the winning design, which will be announced at an awards event at our sponsor QVC's head office on 30th October.
Plans for our new building at the main garden have advanced rapidly and we are now nearly ready to present them before the planners at Wandsworth. We hope that we've arrived at an exciting design which will offera fantastic flexible work space for gardeners using the project as well as a substantial visual improvement compared with our existing rather ramshackle collection of buildings!
In the meantime life at the project goes on and we're all absorbed in preparing for our annual flower show which this year will take place at the Herb Garden on 24th September. The event celebrates the work and skills of disabled gardeners from around London and we have an interesting and unusual selection of classes to enter this year, to tie in with the International Year of the Potato!
- July 2008
It's the height of summer and our Herb Garden looks better than ever before.
The new Alitex glasshouse, which was built with support from the Western Riverside Environment Fund, is stunning. It sits beautifully in the redesigned Herb Garden and looks like it's been there for ever! What's really gratifying for us are the compliments we're getting from the general public. They create a great sense of pride amongst the gardeners attending the project who put so much work into the new garden.
We hope that by the time the winter comes, the glasshouse will be fully operational with a heating and watering system installed and that we'll have started renovating a workshop in the Herb Garden. This will give us two indoor spaces so that we can continue our everyday work at the garden project while we demolish our Main Garden site.
Our focus at the moment is to finalise designs for the new buildings in the Main Garden and on the redesign of the garden itself. We're running a competition to select a garden design and the first round of judging takes place in July. We invited current or recent graduates from 6 garden design colleges to submit 'concept designs' and have 20 very interesting and exciting ideas to look at! The glasshouse is currently home to an exhibition of these designs and we're in the process of a voting process amongst the project's gardeners, volunteers and staff. This, plus the input of an expert judging panel will identify the five best designs. The final winner will be selected in September and the competition which is sponsored by QVC will culminate in an award ceremony which will be broadcast live from QVC's head office.
- May 2008
Our redevelopment project is finally underway - it's exciting but also quite nerve wracking!
We've started work in the Herb Garden and are putting up an amazing 14.5m long Alitex glasshouse, for which we received £25,000 funding from the Western Riverside Environment Fund. We are also renovating a workshop in the garden, which has been leased to us by Wandsworth council. We will use this for our everyday work at the garden project while we demolish our Main Garden site. This temporary move to the Herb Garden will mean that we can still work with all our disabled gardeners.
The footings for the glasshouse are built, and on 12 May the glasshouse will be delivered. Alongside the building work we're redesigning and upgrading the Herb Garden itself so that it does credit to the glasshouse. It's a punishing schedule - four of the eleven beds are being totally replanted and we've got over 500 new plants being delivered!
We are very lucky to have the support of a team of volunteers, including corporate volunteers from Timberland, Deloittes and KPMG. They will all be working alongside our gardeners and staff to transform the garden. We really want to have the Herb Garden and the glasshouse looking beautiful in time for the London Squares Weekend on 7 and 8 June 2008. Why not put the date in your diary and come and see our progress for yourself?
Did you know?
There is lots of information on gardening with a disability, some free advice leaflets and a range of Briefing Sheets for social and therapeutic horticulture professionals.
Click here to start searching.