Continuation of Day two: Next I went on to meet Alistair Gould’s mother Pauline. She provided excellent background information on the beginnings of the gardens. Just one thing out of that: before the gardens were bought, there was a small holding which, from today’s point of view, would have ticked quite a few boxes in respect of sustainability.
After that, Christine had arranged to meet with Brenda Paul who is chair of the Parish Council but also happens to be a very active member of the local Women’s Institute. We met her at the local village hall where she was in the middle of facilitating an aquarelle class. Obviously, talking to her in depth was not possible but I found out that she is also involved with turning St. Margaret’s into a sustainable village and I will have to talk to her about this further. I also managed to make contact with quite a few women who are either volunteers at the garden or live in close vicinity to it. This was rather fortunate as I plan to talk to more neighbours at the next visit and the trust has been rather apprehensive due to its mixed feelings about the neighbours.
After returning to my base at the gardener’s cottage, I met up with Edda Jones, artist who at the time was working at Pines Garden. Bay Trust had recently bought the 1960s bungalow where Edda stayed during the time of her residency. As the bungalow is not convertible and is in itself energy inefficient, it will be knocked down to make way for a new building. This is in view of extending Pines Garden’s enterprise to sustainable holiday and conference accommodation. Her position as a temporary guest could be described as partially neutral, as she was not paid by the Trust but still in some way committed to it. So was she able to be quite critical in how sustainability was being implemented but also saw the overall positive impact of the garden on the community.
