Susan Stuart's Battersea Blog
- July 2010
PHEW!!!!! My last blog in March seems like a million years ago and a million plants ago..... it's a bit of a blur but a very happy blur. All our hard work and nail biting, growing plants for Chelsea and transforming our Main Garden was more than rewarded. We were all blown away when Thrive's RHS Show Garden was awarded a gold medal and best urban garden in show and I know that staff, volunteers and clients alike spent the week glued to the TV to revel in reflected glory as Alan Titchmarsh, Chris Beardshaw and Andy Sturgeon all sang its praises. Closer to home, the revamped Main Garden has been attracting lots of attention and people are even stopping to photograph the new front herbaceous border. It's difficult to underestimate the impact that this sort of success and recognition has on the people who come to garden at the project........people who all too often feel invisible and undervalued.
Client numbers at the garden project are now up to 175 as we continue to launch new programmes and expand existing ones. That's a 257% increase in just 15 months and we're truly bursting at the seams. Most of our expansion will now need to be off site until we can afford to start the redevelopment of the Main Garden buildings.
We've made some pretty impressive progress. Just last week, we hosted a Garden Carnival at Battersea Power Station to raise funds. Over 100 people had a wonderful evening with champagne, Pimms, a 3 course summer supper and entertainment provided by stilt walkers, a fire juggler, human statue and the obligatory magician. It obviously worked because we raised nearly £25,000 from the raffle, 'tree of life' and auction.
Only another £170,000 and our vision of doubling AGAIN to 350 the number of people able to benefit from gardening at the Battersea Garden Project will become a reality. If you can help us or know someone who can..........we need to go............
- March 2010
Spring has sprung and the Battersea Park Garden Project is coming back to life after a long hard winter. All of a sudden the
RHS Chelsea Flower Show seems just round the corner and we're now working furiously to be ready in time. Our first delivery of plants for the show arrived last week - a wonderful selection of herbs, alchemilla and salvias in fantastic hairy coir pots which we will be tending assiduously to look their best for the show.
Last week, we welcomed Radio 4 journalist Mani Djazmi to the garden project. He met with clients enrolled on 'Working it Out' our vocational and employability programme. I felt a real burst of pride listening to them talk. They were just so enthusiastic and their professed interview stage fright seemed to disappear entirely. It was quite humbling to hear what they had to say about their time at Thrive and what it means to them. I was also glad to hear how excited they are at being involved in the Chelsea preparations.... there's a lot to do!
Members of the Tuesdy 'Life After Stroke' group are only in their second week at the garden project and are already immersing themselves in Chelsea. Their current project is to select and sow seeds to grow colourful herbs and salad leaves for the garden. The plan is to plant far too many so that we can enjoy eating them as well!
In our Main Garden, client gardeners have been busy on a big makeover project. We want to mirror some aspects of the Show Garden for the public to see that a Chelsea garden isn't just fantasy; it can translate into real life. All the gardeners are involved and there's a real buzz of excitment. It's also quite scary, there's a lot of bare earth and alarmingly small plants at the moment but hopefully the sun will keep shining and it will all come together.
- February 2010
Phase 1 of the Battersea redevelopment is now at an end and at long last, our refurbished training room and workshop in the Herb Garden is ready.
Whilst the builders have been in, we’ve been using our glasshouse as a training room but today we’re moving out, the heating and staging is being installed and we can now really get to grips with growing plants for the Chelsea show garden.
We’re also going to start sowing seeds for our summer plant sales and this year we’ve got a fantastic new product, bushel boxes brimming with a colourful cut and come again salad and herb mix. It feels like spring is finally here!
- winter 2009
As predicted when I last blogged in early autumn, the number of people coming to use the Battersea Garden Project has now passed 100: October saw the launch of Growing Options with 7 students from special schools in Wandsworth and Lambeth joining this 2 year vocational training programme which will help them to progress to adult life; and in November, 12 people started Working it Out, a brand new training programme to enable disabled Londoners to gain the skills they need to get a job in a London park. This is such an exciting programme and based on the interest we've had in it, we could fill it 3 times over and we'd like to do just that!
It's just a matter of space and of course I am talking about our planned new space.
The good news is that we're about to complete phase 1 of the redevelopment by renovating our workshop and training space in the Herb Garden. That will improve the quality of our facilities but sadly won't create new space.
The big new space will come when we create our new Main Garden facilities and we're still planning to start building next July but that means we've got 8 months to raise a cool £230,000! Our gardeners and volunteers have become a 'lean mean wreath making machine' producing Christmas wreaths, as well as selling Christmas cards and tickets for our fantastic raffle! Don't miss out, there's a holiday for two in Cape Town donated by a friend of mine who runs a guest house there, I've been and and it's FAB! You could also win a Sony TV or a night in London including theatre tickets and hotel. Alternatively you could help us out with donations or by spreading the word. The 1st of July is just 210 days away......
- end of summer 2009
Hectic is the word which summarises this summer. Our open gardens event was bigger an better than ever, we've been selling plants like hot cakes and our client cohort is expanding rapidly as we put new programmes in place.
Over 800 people visited the Herb Garden during the Open Garden Squares weekend and it was a real pleasure to see so many more families than in previous years. Face painting, flower pot painting and our bug hunt proved really popular with children as was my comedy or should be inept (?) balloon blowing technique! The highlight of the weekend was a tea party for over 40 Thrive supporters. Celebrity florist Simon Lycett provided a fantastic demonstration which held even the men in the audience transfixed, and generously donated his floral creations for our raffle, which also included a fantastic bronze bowl donated by Bronzino and a tour of Battersea Power Station. Eric Lanlard of Cake Boy fame donated 50 truly fantastic cup cakes. In total the weekend helped to raise some £2,000 towards our redevelopment campaign.
The garden project is now growing really fast. Our client numbers have gone up from 70 in April to 84 and with the launch of new programmes should reach 100 during the autumn. We've launched a new programme for people living with dementia and are about to start offering a rehabilitation programme for stroke survivors, vocational training for young adults with special needs, and a work skills programme designed to enable unemployed disabled Londoners to gain the qualifications and skills needed to get a job in London's parks and green spaces.
This is all good but we're really creaking at the seams now and the need to get going on our redevelopment is becoming more and more pressing. We have raised over £400,000 but still have another £380,000 to go before we can offer more disabled Londoners the opportunity to benefit from gardening.
Can you help us realise our dream of opening the doors to over 250 disabled people? Of course we need donations but we also need people who can support us in other ways, maybe getting together and organising fund raising events or helping us to raise awareness especially locally. If you can help, please contact me on 0207 720 2212 or my colleague Stephen Barry in our Reading office on 0118 988 5688.
Read Susan's blogs dating back to
May 2008