So the video is nearly complete at 50 mins! Just a few credits at the end to finalise. It is being shown publicly on 12 March and 12 April in Dover’s Silver Screen cinema…. eek.
I’ve even managed to get the blurb together:
Watercress and Daffodilsis a video by Clare Smith which explores the parallels between the structural laying bare of Russell Gardens as it is about to undergo a major restoration project as part of Dover District Council’s Kearsney Parks project. It also reveals a a personal story connected to Kearsney Court Gardens, of which Russell Gardens was once an integral part. An underlying thread is the idea of the garden as a healing and restorative space.
Kearsney Court gardens was designed as a setting for the original Kearsney Court house, by the Edwardian landscape architect, Thomas H. Mawson (1861-1933), and Russell Gardens is a very rare example of Mawson’s work, open to the public in the south east.
The title of the video Watercress and Daffodils takes its name from the fact that the nameKearsney is derived from the French cressonnière, a place where watercress grows, the presence of daffodils at Kearsney Court gardens. Moreover, in 2013, a new daffodil was developed in his honour, the narcissus ‘Thomas H. Mawson’, in the Netherlands to celebrate the first 100 years of the Peace Palace at the Hague, the gardens of which were designed by Mawson.
