Day three: In the morning, I met Linda Winter whom I had met at the aquarelle class. She is a neighbour and her garden borders onto Pines Garden. All in all, she was very positive about Pines Garden and niggles like the state of the road or the overgrown trees didn’t seem a reason for conflict. The only thing she felt was negative was the pricing of the Pines Calyx which seems to be so high that it is out of reach for local use. However, when I asked her how often she uses Pines Garden, I was quite surprised about her answer. On average it is once a year when they have visitors who have not been to St. Margaret’s Bay. The reason why she doesn’t use the garden on a daily basis is simple. There is only one entrance/exit at the bottom of the garden. Hence when she walks her dog, she’d rather follow the road along Pines Garden instead of going in and out at the same end.
Last on this research trip, I talked to Alistair Gould, the founder’s grandson. I thought I’d try to raise issues which came up in the last two days such as parking and pricing and inclusion of local community. He explained that the pricing for the Pines Calyx is guided by principles of sustainability. Simply put it means that if they are able to charge large amounts to small groups of people it has less negative impact on the local community. However, it seems to me that this policy is also somewhat inflexible and stops many things from happening. So has for instance been interest from musicians but as the Calyx has space for only a small audience, the hire fee simply makes it impossible. I think that I might raise this issue with Alistair again another time. Parking, another issue, is likely to be eased as the trust is in the process of transforming land into parking spaces pending planning permission. However, this parking space is mainly thought for visitors to the Calyx and the future accommodation. This is partly because visitor numbers to Pines Garden are intended to be kept small in order to minimise the impact on the local infrastructure. When I asked him about the garden however, there seemed to be comparatively little agenda. There is a long term plan to change the garden to become more self sufficient following principles of permaculture. In respect of implementation he was rather vague. To me as an outsider this seems to be rather hard to understand as the garden in my view appears to be at the core of Pines Garden. But maybe there are other reasons for this which might become clearer during my next visit. After finishing this last interview, I left to return to Bristol with my bag full of minidisks and lots to think about.
