On the 27th November last year, the Mayor announced that a new public garden of blossom trees was to be created to commemorate Londoners who have lost their lives to Covid-19 and the impact the virus has had on all of us since March.
This new garden is being developed in partnership with the National Trust and with support from Bloomberg. The Edible Bus Stop® and Davies White Landscape Architects were chosen as the designers and landscape architects of the memorial and Rosetta Arts were chosen to work closely with the community on its development. Local artist Junior Phipps is collaborating on the design of a path and public benches.
As a member of the GLAs Community Engagement Team I have had the honour to be involved in the development of the garden. It has given me the opportunity to work not just with colleagues from the GLA but also externally with our partners.
I have asked Zoe Hardie from Rosetta Arts and Lucy Footer and Sara Masters from the National Trust to share their thoughts on this new public garden and why it is so important to Londoners to have this space for reflection and remembrance.
Lucy Footer and Sara Masters: National Trust
Lucy writes:
Spring is my favourite time of year. This spring after months of lockdown in my flat I have never felt so alert to the tiny signs of spring I can see emerging slowly but surely out of my window.
Outside of Covid-life working at the National Trust means I’m lucky enough to get to visit some of the most beautiful places the UK has to offer. We look after beaches, mansion houses, castles, landscapes, woodland, gardens and all manner of quirky outhouses, homes and hidden retreats, each with its own story and meaning for those who make a visit. If they can visit. Some of our places are not the easiest to get to, particularly if you travel by public transport and are city-based, as most people in the UK are.
Blossom Together is one of our projects designed to connect people wherever they are with nature and culture through an annual celebration of spring blossom. We plan to plant and celebrate blossom trees in towns, cities and rural locations across the UK, highlighting the beautiful natural wave of flowering we experience each spring through local events, community planting and #BlossomWatch.
Our first blossom garden will open in London this May in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, in the Borough of Newham. The tone and design of the garden has been shaped by the local community, who joined one of the many creative community workshops skilfully led by Rosetta Arts. Local people fed in their thoughts and ideas around what the space should become and how they wanted to use it.
For many of the local residents, the garden represented a much-needed place for peace, tranquillity and a chance to come back together as a community after such a difficult and unprecedented time. My local park in St George Bristol has become my back garden over the past year. A place I go to walk, reflect, lift my gaze and my spirits and sometimes even catch up with a friend (at a distance!).
I’m reminded of the words of Octavia Hill, one of the founders of the National Trust, who spoke about the importance of parks around 125 years ago:
“To my mind they (parks) are even now worth very much; but they will be more and more valuable every year—valuable in the deepest sense of the word; health-giving, joy-inspiring, peace-bringing".
The London Blossom Garden opens this May, and I can’t wait to see this community place brought to life and enjoyed by those who need it most.
Sara writes:
We have 12 places that we look after across London; from Havering in the East to Hounslow in the West; from Bexley in the South to Camden in the North.
Octavia Hill, the National Trust’s co-founder, started her work here believing that access to nature, history and beauty should be for ever, for everyone.
We want to continue and build on this vision: connecting Londoners into what we have and understanding better what more we can contribute informed by the National Trust’s Urban Places focus of addressing unequal access to nature, beauty and history.
‘We all need space; unless we have it, we cannot reach that sense of quiet in which whispers of better things come to us gently.”