The second was the RHS warning of a horticultural skills gap  as the industry fails to attract the next generation of experts required to prepare us for future plant-related challenges. They report that businesses already struggle to fill vacancies, whilst training for a garden career does not seem to be that appealing.

Both stories are revealing about how people in the UK perceive the work of gardening and how it is not seen to be a greatly skilled activity. As a potential career it seems somewhat dated and tarnished by images of hoary hands of the soil. Any tech-savy aspects of the industry are hidden. People don’t really understand what it means to be a horticulturalist, never mind value it as a skilled profession.

Meanwhile many who want a garden at home lack the skills to know when best to plant them, hence garden centres relying on selling plants to people who don’t know how to garden. It is a pleasant hobby or way to make a space look nice rather than something to take time to learn.

And yet, as both these stories also show this is big business. According to the RHS the horticultural industry is worth £9 billion to the UK economy annually. Amongst all the narratives of back to the land and counter-culture through gardening it is easy to forget its strong vein of consumerism. Russell Hitchings’ fascinating study of how people behave in garden centres shows how plants become commodities not living things.

It seems that this is one area of our ‘skills economy’ which could do with a little more championing.

So I’ve been going through it all, looking for themes and patterns, thinking about what it all means, and what seems to be important. Plenty of mind maps and long long lists. Slowly some of the threads I’m tugging out from the tangle seem to be weaving together.

The first 3,010 words are written. Only 76,990 to go.  

 Of course it was hard work doing the physical tasks of a volunteer gardener alongside the business of research. But I can’t really complain. They were lovely days learning how to grow, working alongside all manner of people and getting to know them. There were plenty of smiles and laughs, and the satisfaction of seeing things I’d sown getting big enough to sell.

 Despite reports of a wash out summer there were very few days I got a real soaking. Yes, sometimes I arrived home exhausted and damp but I also returned tanned and freckled, brimming with chatter about my day.  I realised that if your job involves being outside day in day out you shift to work around the rhythms of the weather. Work in the polytunnel can be done during a shower, saving the digging for a dry spell. When everyone else is in their office staring longingly out the window at a sunny May day the gardener is out feeling the warmth.

 So it’s a bit of a shock now the year is over and I’m knuckling down to desk work. The rucksack of fieldwork bits and bobs has been unpacked and put away. My freckles are fading and I worry about losing the garden work-out whilst retaining the appetite. I root around my wardrobe trying to find something to wear apart from dirty frayed work clothes. Plus I miss my garden colleagues and knowing what they’re up to, all that gossip and banter I’m losing to the solitary life of researcher.

 I’m adjusting to a different way of life, different rhythms and patterns, remembering who I was before I was a gardener. For once my finger nails are clean, some small recompense for coming back inside.

Waiting for the bus after a dirty day’s work

I’ve started to notice beauty in the strangest places. Or find the most unlikely things beguiling. Like this creamy skinned patisson squash which was hidden by foliage whilst it grew large enough to be worth picking. It was almost a shame to snip it from the plant but equally I worried that greedy slugs would get to it before me, stealing my supper and deforming its smooth curves.

Of course gardens have long been appreciated as visual treats, a blaze of colour and patterns to tease the senses. The veg patch is less celebrated for its aesthetics, associated more with function than form. Allotments in particular are notoriously loved or loathed for their shabbiness. But surely those neat lines of carefully spaced onion bulbs sending up sinuous green shoots have a certain beauty. As are the pale silver-green pea tendrils winding and contrasting against rigid dull sticks. A lingering look around the vegetable garden or head tilted to take in different angles reveals plenty that is pretty or striking.

I have even developed what I have come to think of as the Polytunnels Project- far too many photos of these productive hubs resembling plastic igloos. A certain light casting a striking silhouette of the struts, leaves and raindrops decorating the surface, torn skin wafting lazily in the breeze. Most of these pictures are stolen in a moment of solitude in order to avoid the embarrassment of explaining what I’m photographing. The imagery which entices me would I’m sure be ignored by most, actively disliked by some. Maybe that’s what makes it so intriguing.

Don’t you love it when a book makes sense of things which happen in real life? I’ve just read What a Plant Knows by the scientist Daniel Chamovitz. Not only does he know quite a lot about plants, he’s able to write about them in a way accessible to a non-specialist for whom A-level biology is a long distant memory.

In turn he considers that what we think of as the human senses of smell, hearing, memory, touch and knowing where we are, as they might be attributed to plants. By drawing on a long history of botanic experiments he shows that pea tendrils can remember when they’ve been touched, plant cells work out which way is up, even in space. He explains the working of well-known phenomena like a venus fly trap closing round its prey. Or how leaves warn their neighbours to protect themselves from dangerous foes which are nearby. Hence I often see one plant in a row riddled with insect damage whilst the rest of the crop is fine.  

The book also made sense of a recent mountain walk on a route I know few people use regularly. All around was high bracken yet the ‘path’ was clear of this growth, along the route the grass was short as if a stream of feet had trampled it. This is a familiar scene, one beautifully harnessed by Richard Long’s art. With my new understanding of how plants respond to touch I realised that all it takes is a few brief sweeps past to cause plants to stop growing in a certain direction so the path stays clear of bracken.

Looking at the chemical reactions behind such actions it becomes clear that plants aren’t so very different from us. They receive messages from other plants by smelling certain chemicals in the air. Their cells initiate complex reactions in response to external events. This shouldn’t really come as any surprise- after all we’ve evolved from common ancestors, and human functioning also has to rely on flows of chemicals and electricity.

Chamovitz concludes that despite their sensory skill, we shouldn’t fool ourselves that plants are like people. Fundamentally, they don’t care what we think of them. But I agree with Jane Bennett that anthropomorphism can be useful- it encourages us to think of humans as a bit more like plants. If we start to think that plants have senses it reminds us we humans are not so different from the rest of the world. 

There is a bit of nostalgic ‘things ain’t what they used to be’ feeling that community used to be stronger. (Thanks to a recent Radio 4 programme I’ve found out this is called declinism). But it’s by no means all parochial and gloom. There’s celebration of community spirit, and how people enjoy the togetherness of their gardens. We’ve also discussed virtual communities and what they have in common with their physical counterparts.

One thing I’m interested in is whether people open what they mean by community beyond humans. Do neighbourhood sparrows or frogs get a look in? In one sense the answer seems to be no as the first definition which comes to mind focuses very much on people living near each other. In another sense the influence of ideas like permaculture, and the way gardeners nurture all manner of beings suggests they ‘commune’ not just with humans.

The word community has always been an ought and an is – it doesn’t just denote how things are but how things should be. In which case maybe we’ll see more people using it to encourage a life lived with greater affinity with non-humans.

Each garden I visit at the moment is peppered with scarlet poppies dancing in the breeze, glistening under bright sun. From a distance the colour draws the eye. Up closes the texture entices the fingers. It seems impossible to resist the pull to lightly touch the tissue thin petals so glossy and smooth, soft as silk.

Having a few minutes alone in and enjoying doing nothing in the summer sun, I took the chance to film the flowers. A still scene with so much motion, so alive. How rare to just sit and watch, absorbed. How easily imagined far from the city centre I was in.

As I discussed in the presentation, I’ve eaten all manner of things at community gardens. Food I’ve shared with gardeners ranges from vegetable stew to nasturtium flowers, to chocolate bars. I’ve asked them what they like eating and the answers are even more varied. One thing that’s been surprising is just how many gardeners don’t like vegetables. Even if they grew them. The taste of broccoli is unpalatable to many, and is not as appealing as crisps or chocolate.

There are many reasons people eat what they do, it’s undoubtedly caught up with who we spend time with and who we want them to think we are. Then there’s convenience and cost. And habit: most of us eat what we’ve always eaten. That’s why it’s so hard to get people to change their diet. Campaigns like Five A Day face the huge challenge that many people – especially children – don’t like the taste and texture of unfamiliar fruit and veg. Plus a veggie rich diet is associated with femininity- real men don’t eat salad.

Programs which have successfully encouraged people to try new foods and eat more vegetables required cooking lessons, information, tasting sessions, educating the mind and the palate, not just gardening. Even then the taste and texture of certain foods remained off putting. At some community gardens food isn’t really the focus, the aim is not to influence what people eat. Those who chose to spend time growing plants – even edible ones- may be motivated by a range of things, not necessarily food.

Lots of things don’t taste that nice, and few will agree on which they are. I think it’s important that we don’t ignore this unpleasantness. Let’s not assume that gardeners are going to love eating all those things they ‘should’ eat. Or that they’ll learn to love eating the ‘right’ things through gardening.

The sign showing membership of Green Thumb is often on display, linking gardens to the authorities through the logo of the city’s parks department.

In the 90s Mayor Giuliani tried to claim more than 100 gardens for development, calling those who fervently resisted him communists [1]. Some were lost, many were saved and New York has almost 800 community gardens today. At least 500 of these are part of a government sponsored scheme which offers secure land tenure as long as the space is maintained and regularly open to the public.

The city hasn’t called a complete truce with gardeners as I saw in Greenwich Village. A campaign is under way to oppose the university’s expansion plans which would abut La Guardia Corner garden.

With traffic whizzing by on one side and tower blocks looming over head the constant squeeze on these tiny patches of greenery was palpable.

I wasn’t expecting much garden action in deepest February, and assumed I’d spend a couple hours peering through locked gates. But several forces seemed to be on my side.

First there was the unseasonably warm weather which brought a few keen gardeners out from hibernation, blinking into the sun. Then browsing the guidebook I’d got from the library I noticed its maps show the sites of community gardens.

So I set off around the Lower East Side, looking for some of the Loisaida gardens I’d read so much about. [2] Even having read about them, I was surprised how many there were – at least two or three on each block. And although each is quite unique, they were unlike any community garden I’ve seen in the UK. Most were tiny- the size of a long-gone building, just a few meters wide – like the gap in a smile where a tooth is missing. The chain link fencing meant that even when closed my camera and I got a good look in.

I’m afraid to say my first thought was that they’re not pretty. Being in the inner city they are quite shady, and even though you wouldn’t expect verdant growth in the winter there didn’t seem room for many plants. Much space is taken up by small casitas –wooden huts typical of Puerto Rican culture- and seating areas. Then there are trinkets, toys, sculptures, endless variations on the garden ornament; one man’s art, another man’s junk. These and the popularity of flags at least made them colourful.

Timing was on my side at a couple of the gardens. I happened to arrive at De Colores the same times as Occupy’s Seed Ball Bike Ride. Some of the gardeners welcomed us, telling us about the set up accompanied by reggae from the pedal powered sound system. Then I strolled past the Secret Garden as two of the regulars were sitting for a smoke and a chat. They nodded slowly as I babbled about my interest and asked to take photos. Didn’t say much – I forgot to ask their names- but that they are Mexican.

The few gardens I sought out in Brooklyn had a very different feel, for a start they were larger and less hemmed in thanks to the way buildings drop in height as you cross the water. Several displayed environmentalist credentials as solar panels or signs informing of the careful composting system. Even though the Red Shed was organised for some serious food cultivation, it too had a space for gathering, for the all important garden activity of sitting, chatting, supping. Like its East Side brethren, the chain link fence allowed all passers by to take a look, see what’s going on. Whatever the opening hours or land ownership, I was left with the sense that New York’s community gardens are very public because they are so numerous and so visible.

[1] See Schmelzopf, K. 2002 ‘Incommensurability, Land Use, and the Right to Space:
Community Gardens in New York City’ Urban Geography Volume 23, Issue 4, 323-343 for a discussion of the struggle.
[2] See for example Schmelzkopf, K. 1995 ‘Urban Community Gardens as Contested Space Geographical Review Vol. 85 No 3 pp 364-381 and Saldivar-Tanaka, L., & Krasny, M. 2004 ‘Culturing community development, neighborhood open space, and civic agriculture: The case of Latino community gardens in New York City’ Agriculture and Human Values, 21, 399–412