HOW DO YOU START MAKING A GARDEN?
Audio/Interviews/Aural History with the Waterside Gardeners.
Earphones or headphones recommended.
April 2020 I took interviews with the gardeners of Waterside community garden in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. This audio is an edit of those interviews to make a collective telling of the site, their work and life within it and how, maybe, to make a garden.
Waterside Garden was originally wasteland, cleared 10 years a go with one woman's initiative and a little digger. Through unofficial community digging and planting and building and tending it is continuing to become a garden.
This audio brings up many things including: relationship to plants and growing, community making outside of bureaucracy, bringing land into communal use without ownership or fees, mental health and green space, mental health and gardening, digging, history through found objects, resting and loitering...
With thanks to the beautiful voices of Jane, Mya, Sarah, Tony, Teana, Eden Rose and Sean. My voice also features as a Waterside gardener myself.
Unfunded self initiated lockdown project - made to combat loneliness and to celebrate the significant importance of this garden during lockdown, and of outdoor green space in general.