This week we came to the end of the Season of Creation and our last Stilling Video is Stilling: St Columba’s Cave. Ellary, Argyll
This has been a few days full of gardens.
First an exhibition at the V and A, Dundee – Garden Futures, Designing With Nature.
Then a walk round the Dundee Botanic Gardens, an afternoon gardening and finally the Guild meeting yesterday afternoon with a talk about the Community Garden at Granton which brought everything full circle.
The exhibition looked at how gardens are an attempt to shape nature, are visions of earthly paradise. In time of crisis, from personal loss to international conflicts, gardening can provide solace, stability and hope.
We now realise how access to nature is essential to our health and wellbeing and thatgardens are a limitless source of inspiration. Walking through the Botanic Gardens, listening to a robin singing loudly, seeing the Autumn colours developing on the trees, feeling the peace of the garden overcome the noise of the neighbouring airport and main road highlighted this. Then working in a garden that needed a bit of care, bringing some order, preparing it for winter brought calm and hope for future growth and a good harvest.
In these times of climate crisis, movement of people and food insecurity, gardens are critical for exploring sustainability and community action.
Granton Community gardeners started in 2018 in a small plot in Granton and has developed into a thriving group growing food crops, making gardens in unused plots at the corners of streets, bringing people together. https://www.grantoncommunitygardeners.org/home
Creation is the whole of the world in which exist but the way we act has a huge effect on every other part as we are now realising.
