THIS IS ENOUGH / GÀRRADH GU LEÒR
A Somewhere Project by Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie
Working with a garden, even a 'wild' one, takes time. It's often said when you move to a new garden you should do nothing for a year - except watch. Watch what comes up and when, look for what you like, what sits well together and what takes over. Look at where the sun shines, where frost gathers, gauge how much rain falls and feel how the wind blows.
Such advice might equally apply to artists creating new work - in our case, a memorial for a given place: For how long do you need to look and listen to see beyond the surface, to feel what is really special about a place?
'Unprecedented'.
We heard this phrase so often during the pandemic, and we all knew that, for once, what we were enduring really did fit this description. And yet what modest trials did our days often demand of us in this crisis? Making the most of a walk, missing friends and family, meeting one person outside, innovating meals with what we had in the cupboard and growing what we could with the seeds we had. This had to be 'enough', even when we had all had enough.
We looked in detail again at our immediate surroundings, at the lockdown landscapes with which we believed we were familiar. A continual news stream detailing the daily Covid19 mortality rates made a jarring soundtrack to the tender care of germinating seedlings. Both seemed strange and sad, close by and far, far away. In Mull the first months of lockdown were blessed with uncharacteristic sunshine, an absence of traffic noise and a tourist season that didn't begin. Infrequent, almost empty ferries diminished even the usual hum of boat noise from the Sound. In Aros Walled Garden, community plans to transform the space went on hold and in the lull, nature wasted no time. Trees blossomed largely unobserved, bracken shoots unfurled, brambles gained ground, lichens and mushrooms flourished. Occasionally a stone crumbled away from the wall that once surrounded the space.
That wall is like a frame, an enclosure which once enabled a productive garden for a private house. But now could this be the frame in which to view a new public garden? Maybe this frame gives us 'enough' to see the space already (or still) as a garden?
What would this garden look like if we held back from bringing in plants, seeds, a digger, top soil? What if instead we look again at what it already contains?
What if we remember together, honour perhaps, the garden that once was here, how past communities have grown together and recent communities of plants and people who have occupied the space. How can we care for the precious and particular biodiversity it now contains?
Looking closely we can already see a garden full of lichens, a collection of mosses, green mounds of comfrey pushing through the brown bracken that match stumps of box hedging that once delineated beds. Two elderly fruit trees send blossom spinning across the garden in the breeze, catching in the blackcurrant bushes that have long since formed their own fragrant copse.
What can we make with what we have here? What can we build with the stones from a fallen wall? What can we compost down, graft on, layer up or grow together in this already abundant garden in a forest?
When we use the wall to frame what we already have, we start to see Aros as a forest of plenty, somewhere to forage for food, to build things, play or botanise. We can gently intervene perhaps, co-design guilds of plants and trees that can flourish together and spaces where we can gather amongst them. We can trust what grows well here and what we have. We can work from the starting point that THIS IS ENOUGH.
Over the next few months Somewhere will be hosting a series of conversations, events and alongside making sessions looking closely at Aros Walled Garden. We are keen to hear from anyone who would like to share their experience of lockdown and the pandemic particularly in relation to the garden, especially those with memories of the space and anyone wishing to be involved with it in the future.
We plan to work from the starting point THIS IS ENOUGH.