Newsletter
The following is a selection of articles taken from our most recent newsletter that was issued in 2003. If you would like a copy of the full newsletter, including pictures, then please contact us
In generating copy for this newsletter everybody connected with the garden on a daily basis was invited to contribute an article to this edition. Sometimes, you just have to ask. As a result this is something of an 'impressionist' piece, with people offering their own particular take on what constitutes an average day in the garden.
What else is there to say?
If you are struck by the number of references to moving things around this reflects our current preoccupation with laying new paths and reorganising workshops and storage space in an effort to tidy up 'grot-spots'. Oh, to arrive each day to find that the anvil's in the forge, the teapot's in the tearoom, the chicken's in the henhouse and God has taken this opportunity to spend a leisurely morning in his heaven reading BOG's Life!
We'll see!
Danny O'D
---o---
Cement Works!
Angela Allen
Charlie Dimmock? Tommy Walsh? Who needs them?
Bridewell thrives without their input.
Alan Titchmarsh? Well, that's a different matter. No matter how much hard landscaping he does he always ends up with the floral appendages to finish the place off nicely!
Flowers? We did know what they were, once.
Joking aside - the word oasis springs to mind when I think about Bridewell (no, Kenny - nothing to do with music!) - a safe haven in a harsh world.
---o---
First Impressions
Alex Taylor
When I was told that working at Bridewell would be a 'moving experience' I thought I was in for something spiritually uplifting.
Now I know the truth!!!
I am afraid to stand still just in case, like a piece of corrugated metal, Danny has me moved to another part of the garden.A month or so into my time as a volunteer at Bridewell I realise that previous experience as a navvy, removal man, scrap metal dealer or quarryman would have been the best preparation.
Horticultural skills? What earthly use would they be?
Still, it must help me with the job seeking. Wait until the government announces the next phase of motorway building, I will be at the front of the queue!
And Bridewell is not just a garden, a forge too. How fantastic to be able to glimpse into the world of yesteryear. The clank of red hot metal being shaped on the anvil, the sparks, the steam, the muscular frame of a cheery blacksmith...oh no! its just Paul.
Seriously though, I wanted to say what a wonderful place Bridewell is.
The vision, drive, creativity and application that are so evident are truly inspirational.
In over 20 years - though I'm sure its hard to believe that I could be that old! - of working I have rarely seen such a fantastic achievement. There is so much to learn from the tremendous example of staff, gardeners and supporters.
It is great to hear that funding has been secured for the immediate future. I am sure that the garden will continue to go from strength to strength and I sincerely hope I will continue to be a part of that future.
Best wishes for 2003 to all.
---o---
Vegetable Year
Margaret Keeping
Shiny green packets wait
in the greenhouse.
Potatoes sprout rosily in chitting trays.
Now pots of compost clutter on the staging
till frail white stalks support two pale green leaves.
Earth waits.
Thin, harden-off, rake a fine tilth,
plant out and firm.
We dance the minuet of leek plants-
One dibs, one plants, one waters in.
Sunwarmth and sudden growth, short fast
asparagus and frondy carrots.
A corn mosaic pattern's laid,
the bean poles lean heads, splay feet,
waiting to be embraced and dressed
by scarlet flowers and golden bees.
Dense green quilts the potato beds
till yellowing leaves say 'now' - the bliss of
finding their pale offsprings subterranean , the
sorrow of the murdered, sliced or spiked.
High summer - French beans dangle on unstable plants,
carrot rows are patchy , onions good.
Cabbage sits dusty in late summer heat.
Foot - long beans keep coming on their weary stalks
till one week they're abandoned, left
as leathery mottled strips that rattle in the wind.
Just bluegreen leeks now, hearting cabbage, and
the bolting towers of seed-providing flowers,
lemon and white, to fill brown envelopes,
and be forgotten along with purple-mottled beans.
Some new green shiny packets; some half-used
which won't stack neatly up upon the shelf, wait.
Earth waits.
---o---
Tom's Secret Garden
Tom Richardson
Throughout my life my relationship with gardening has been slight. "I'll do the brute force and ignorance bit and you do the rest" was where I both started and finished. Resolute in but one thing - true ignorance.
A vineyard in the west of Oxfordshire?
As Chipping Norton is by far the coldest place I have ever worked in, a real brass monkey of a town, then surely the only ill-health around lay with the people promoting the scheme.
Grapes? - forget it! Wine? - surely a joke?
A neglected garden, what does this mean?
Plenty grows in every garden, cared for or otherwise. The wall keeps ours shut in, exclusive, as well as keeping strangers out. But what will come of all this and what analogies can be ripened between the garden and its gardeners?
Form is gradually imposed - the paths, the raised beds, the greenhouses and the sheds, the walkways, the concrete.
Most significant of all, outside the walls, the vineyard.
A greedy thirst tempers wonder - didn't the Romans, a couple of thousand years ago,
Grow their own vines at this northern outpost? Presumably some of these were better than just drinkable. So why not us in dear old West Oxfordshire?
It will be a year or two we are told.
Weary, in the meantime we make do with 3 for the price of 2 at Bottoms Up and Oddbins. And 'making do' is right - our own will of course be sweeter, nuttier, tastier, even if we do have to wait...and wait.
Meanwhile the vegetables are more than good, particularly the brussels.
But what does this orderliness bring to unquiet minds? Is every mind struck by the increasing symmetry and imposition of order? Some minds do thrive on dysfunction and lack of elegance.
Perhaps the quarry has its place and needs to be included in the whole. Indeed the whole surely cannot be a whole without such a place of disorder and lack of grace.
BUT all credit to the creators of the scheme and the staff who are so calm in giving the appearance of knowing what their doing. It is all about caring and the human warmth in relating to both plants and people.
I enjoy my Mondays.
---o---
Forge
Kieran Downey
Beeb Beeb Beeb ...
BEEB BEEB BEEB ...
Urrr, what? Who set my alarm for 8.00? - 'Back to sleep'.
Wake up at 8.30 -
Arrrrr...Bridewell, quick, get up, get dressed and out the door, quick, into town, jump on a bus.
I'm on my way -
Once again we're all in the tearoom
and the jokes are flowing.
Once again I'm in the forge
...and the sparks are flying.
Cranking it up for the day's adventure.
What to make today?
On my hands and knees searching for a suitable chunk of metal.
Got one, and in it goes, buried deep into the red-hot coals.
Gloves on and out it comes - red hot itself - onto the anvil and down comes the hammer.
---o---
Hold the back page...
G. Who
The air was thick.
And, judging from the blank look on their faces, it was clearly in good company.
But that's all that was clear in the silence of the dimly lit, smoky, humid, turgid, stifling Editorial suite where they were still mopping up excess adjectives from having spilt the thesaurus earlier.
They had been missing for days now.
And, but for the faint tap-tapping from their keyboards - like hostages communicating with each other along a network of pipes and radiators - nobody would have known they were still there, setting and resetting, typing, filing, copying, cutting, spreading (mostly on toast) getting it all ready for the...
FOURTH EDITION!
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