Read the archive of Susan's Stuarts blog on the Battersea redevelopment:
-mid to late spring 2009
Last time I wrote I was reflecting on what a Godsend the glasshouse had been during the arctic days of early February. Now is it literally a production hot house and there's barely room to move inside! We are growing over 2000 pots of herbs and 'cut and come again' salad leaves as well as around 1000 lilies and gladioli, all of which we hope to sell during the course of the summer. The salad leaves are proving amazingly popular and we can hardly sow seed fast enough to keep up with demand.
In the midst of all the economic gloom and doom, we have received some fantastic news. Guys and St Thomas Charitable Trust have awarded us a grant of £20,000 for the refurbishment of our workshop in the Herb Garden. This means that we will be able to work towards launching Growing Options, a training programme for young people with special needs which has been a great success at our sister garden project in Trunkwell. It also means that we can focus all our energies now on the Main Garden redevelopment and that we'll have a base to work from when we close that garden for the building works.
At the moment, staff, volunteers and clients are busy preparing for our Open Gardens weekend in the Herb Garden on 13th and 14th June. This is an annual event, part of the London Open Garden Squares Weekend, and a great opportunity for the public to get to know the work we do and see what an amazing garden disabled people attending the garden project have created. There will be a wonderful array of plants for sale, delicious refreshments, a raffle and plenty of activities for children including face painting, flower pot painting, a treasure hunt and art competition.
Why not come and see for yourself? Visit the Herb Garden during our Open Weekend on 13th (10am to 5pm) or 14th June (11am to 2pm) and one of Thrive's staff or volunteers will be there to show you round.
- February and March 2009
During the arctic days of early February, the new glasshouse really came into its own providing an invaluable indoor work space and, for the first time, we were able to carry on working in the Herb Garden regardless of the weather. Now, in preparation for the new gardening season we have installed staging in the glasshouse and have some ambitious plans. We hope to be able to grow all the plants we need for our gardens and a significant proportion of the plants we sell.
This summer will see phase two of the redevelopment underway - the refurbishment of our workshop in the Herb Garden to create a second new indoor work space for disabled gardeners. This will become our base when work starts on the Main Garden.
Plans for the Main Garden are now close to completion. Last winter, together with our architects Pedder & Scampton and their team of professional advisors, we finalised plans for a new purpose built work, training and office facilities and we received planning permission in January this year. We are now agreeing the choice of materials and the contract process.
Whilst the economic downturn has inevitably had an impact on us and slowed down the rate of funds being pledged, we now have 40% of the funding in place and with such an inspiring and compelling project, we remain confident of success.
- January 2009
When I last wrote, a glorious Indian Summer was just coming to an end. Today, the sky may be the same fantastic clear blue but there is snow and ice all around and the temperature is below freezing.
I am always amazed at our gardeners and volunteers. Whilst half of the country is enjoying a few days off work, we have a full complement of people here today and they're all working outdoors.
The good news is that the plans for our new building have now been approved by Wandsworth's planning department so now we are getting down to the job of thinking about materials and tendering processes. I am becoming an expert on air exchange heating, wood chip boilers and many other fascinating topics!
Less good is that the credit crunch means that fundraising - always a tough task - is even tougher at the moment and although we have about 40% of the funds we need pledged or donated, the pace of funds coming in has slowed considerably in recent months. Competition for scarce funds is fierce but we believe that Thrive's redevelopment is a compelling proposal with enormous potential.
- October 2008
As autumn puts the year to bed, so the frenzied pace of events and activities at the Thrive Battersea Garden project has also started to slow.....just a bit!
The highlight of the month was selecting the winner of our garden design competition. With three fantastic and very different designs to choose from, it was no easy task but we spent a delightful afternoon at the height of October's Indian summer considering the designs and talking to the finalists. The winner was announced on October 30th. QVC the company which sponsored the awards was kind enough to host the event and their CEO Steve Hoffman revealed the winner and presented the finalists with their cheques. Sarah Price won the first prize of £3,500 and will be working with Thrive to develop the final detailed proposals for a complete revamp of our Main Garden. Vanessa Adorni took second place (£1,000) and Alyson Hamilton was third (£500). Around 50 Thrive supporters and QVC staff attended the event - it was great to see so much interest.
As winter approaches, we're all hoping that this will be our last year in our ramshackle and not very warm buildings! I had an email last night from our architects Pedder & Scampton, the plans for our new building have just been submitted to Wandsworth's planners. I love the new proposals.....let's just hope that the planners do too.
The next phase of the redevelopment is a bit like 'winter for gardeners' but with a difference. Instead of snuggling up with a seed catalogue, I shall be doing so with building materials catalogues!
- September 2008
September has been a really exciting, and extremely busy, month. We have, for the first time really reaped the benefits of the new glasshouse and all the work that we've done to improve the Herb Garden.
On 24th September, we held our annual flower show, a fantastic event celebrating the work and skills of disabled gardeners attending Thrive and other projects from London and the South East. Having the glasshouse meant that we were able to host the event in one of our own gardens. The Herb Garden looked resplendent with the glasshouse flanked by 2 marquees and a record number of people, over 200, attended the show.
On 30th September, the glasshouse was once again in action as our Chairman, David Aitchison-Tait hosted a garden party for potential supporters of the redevelopment campaign. Despite being a wet and slightly chilly evening, over 60 people attended the event. They were able to learn all about our vision for the Battersea Garden Project, not just in terms of how many more disabled Londoners we'll be able to work with at the garden project, but also about how having a 'show case' project in our capital city will help Thrive as an organisation promote the benefits of gardening to 'movers and shakers', who can help us increase access to gardening for disabled people. We are already seeing some extremely positive results from the evening. Only two days later, we have received £11,000 in donations and several more pledges of support.
We've still got a long way to go in terms of raising the £765,000 to realise our dreams, but with over £300,000 in the kitty, the dream is starting to feel like reality!
- August 2008
Since I last wrote, we have selected three finalists for our garden design competition - Vanessa Adorni (Capel Manor), Alyson Hamilton (English Gardening School) and Sarah Price (Oxford School of Garden Design). It was great fun but very challenging to choose just three from such an amazing selection of entries. Our three finalists now have to put together a detailed design for the users and judging panel to select the winning design, which will be announced at an awards event at our sponsor QVC's head office on 30th October.
Plans for our new building at the main garden have advanced rapidly and we are now nearly ready to present them before the planners at Wandsworth. We hope that we've arrived at an exciting design which will offera fantastic flexible work space for gardeners using the project as well as a substantial visual improvement compared with our existing rather ramshackle collection of buildings!
In the meantime life at the project goes on and we're all absorbed in preparing for our annual flower show which this year will take place at the Herb Garden on 24th September. The event celebrates the work and skills of disabled gardeners from around London and we have an interesting and unusual selection of classes to enter this year, to tie in with the International Year of the Potato!
- July 2008
It's the height of summer and our Herb Garden looks better than ever before.
The new Alitex glasshouse, which was built with support from the Western Riverside Environment Fund, is stunning. It sits beautifully in the redesigned Herb Garden and looks like it's been there for ever! What's really gratifying for us are the compliments we're getting from the general public. They create a great sense of pride amongst the gardeners attending the project who put so much work into the new garden.
We hope that by the time the winter comes, the glasshouse will be fully operational with a heating and watering system installed and that we'll have started renovating a workshop in the Herb Garden. This will give us two indoor spaces so that we can continue our everyday work at the garden project while we demolish our Main Garden site.
Our focus at the moment is to finalise designs for the new buildings in the Main Garden and on the redesign of the garden itself. We're running a competition to select a garden design and the first round of judging takes place in July. We invited current or recent graduates from 6 garden design colleges to submit 'concept designs' and have 20 very interesting and exciting ideas to look at! The glasshouse is currently home to an exhibition of these designs and we're in the process of a voting process amongst the project's gardeners, volunteers and staff. This, plus the input of an expert judging panel will identify the five best designs. The final winner will be selected in September and the competition which is sponsored by QVC will culminate in an award ceremony which will be broadcast live from QVC's head office.
- May 2008
Our redevelopment project is finally underway - it's exciting but also quite nerve wracking!
We've started work in the Herb Garden and are putting up an amazing 14.5m long Alitex glasshouse, for which we received £25,000 funding from the Western Riverside Environment Fund. We are also renovating a workshop in the garden, which has been leased to us by Wandsworth council. We will use this for our everyday work at the garden project while we demolish our Main Garden site. This temporary move to the Herb Garden will mean that we can still work with all our disabled gardeners.
The footings for the glasshouse are built, and on 12 May the glasshouse will be delivered. Alongside the building work we're redesigning and upgrading the Herb Garden itself so that it does credit to the glasshouse. It's a punishing schedule - four of the eleven beds are being totally replanted and we've got over 500 new plants being delivered!
We are very lucky to have the support of a team of volunteers, including corporate volunteers from Timberland, Deloittes and KPMG. They will all be working alongside our gardeners and staff to transform the garden. We really want to have the Herb Garden and the glasshouse looking beautiful in time for the London Squares Weekend on 7 and 8 June 2008. Why not put the date in your diary and come and see our progress for yourself?