The Hope Garden Is Go

Maybe because of the relatively low number of guests, the workshop at Cilgerran Village Hall felt really productive and engaged, and covered a lot of ground, explaining the ideas behind the community space in a wildlife forest garden that is the Hope Garden.

Denise Assembly ideas

Denise is one of the collaborators on the Hope Garden. Long time community activist and now Community Assembly organiser extraordinaire, Denise is diving in to help out with the Local Places for Nature application after next week.

Ideas for Assemblies

• peat free compost
• native plants
• rewilding
• local materials
• rising temperatures & ecology
• climate justice & horticulture

Trust the People info

• Community Assembly manual
• Community At Work organisation, authors of Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-making
• Slide deck for workshop

Prototype partners

• The People v Climate Change
• Four possible sites
  1. Naturewise Community Forest Garden, Cardigan - still waiting to hear back from Claire Turner. Ideally sited, next to the police station within walking distance of Cardigan
  2. Yr Ardd community garden, Llandysul - don’t know much about the project, think it’s in the town, I know one of the directors vaguely, strong Welsh links
  3. Meads Project, Milford Haven - early co-design stages. Bit of a trek (1 hour) for me but really interesting project using community assemblies
  4. Abergwili, Carmarthen - via Audley. Parc yr Esgob?
• Ffion Gwyn, artist using Welsh wildlife names. Appeared on Countryfile
• Public access RHS Hampton Court:

“For gardens over 80m2, walk-through access is possible and should be specified on the application form (one-way access requires a minimum path width of 1.5m; two-way access requires a minimum path width of 2m)

Starting out

Denise chat

• Possible Senedd backing? Contact Jane Davidson
• Constraint on space 10m x 15m
• Space for furnishings to move around, to accommodate diverse needs (Radical Inclusion pillar)
• Lightweight robust movable seating. Can have it as amphitheatre, then move them to individual breakout groups:
  
• Move according to the needs of everyone being able to have clear lines of vision and hearing
• 3 phases of the assembly
  1. Intro,
  2. Breakout discussions / decision prioritisation
  3. Plenary - gather ideas & suggestions, then prioritise for sharing
• Outputs could be quantifiable outputs, measured on graph (eg Climate Anxiety Scale)
• Outputs if they are decisions and recommendations are then shared at or after the process.
• Trust The People running free online Community Assembly course in September
• XR Choosing Our Future With Community Assemblies
• Infrastructure
  • John Little approach of varied growing medium, build in complexity of habitat.
  • Infrastructure needs consideration of assembly and dis-assembly and moving to another location after RHS.
• Liaising with speakers eg
  • Dave Goulson - Bumble Bee Conservation Trust
  • Cleeve West – homeless garden creator
• Need support with facilitators and to promote training to get practice in regularly in advance
• The XR Gardeners will be pulling together a list of experts for local groups to draw on

Jake input

• Wildlife and forest garden
  • Creating habitat for wildlife, by building in structural complexity (ie nooks and crannies!) into the garden infrastructure (paths, hedging, growing material, seating, pillars etc). #
  • Diversity of native plants and wild flowers, to support larval stages of inverterbrates, as insects are the backbone of the ecosystem.
  • Growing perennial edible crops that are resilient to climate changes, which also highlights the need for agriculture to change (ie toward agroforestry, away from energy intensive farming)
• Possible topics: gardening in a climate crisis, industrialised horticulture, peat compost, native plants, perennial crops, community gardens, mass extinctions, resilient gardens, community gardens…

Hope as a working name

Had a chat with Beth, I think Hope is a better working name than Crisis.