Today, I took an camera and a walk through some local woods. Here, I stumbled across a community garden project which combines horticulture, creativity and vegetable growing with other community projects, created wholly by volunteers and service users.
Interspersed amongst the trees I noticed canvases painted with intricate patterns and bold colours. The walk through the pathway of paintings, hand made bird houses and wind chimes was peaceful, if somewhat eerie in the sense that this part of the wood had obviously seen activity, yet there was no one in sight. The area was a warren of pathways, connected gardens and vegetable patches.
After entering through numerous gates with hand painted signs which asked visitors not to pick the crops, I came across a house made of woven twigs, with a wooden armchair fashioned as the centrepiece within; a young child’s den paradise. At various points throughout the walk, there came resting points which consisted of large wooden seating areas, often surrounding the remains of once-burning camp fires. A barbecue area, labelled ‘Kitchen’, (complete with an old mouldy block of cheese!) sat in the centre of the vegetable garden. Painted panels told me which vegetables and fruits were gowing in each raised bed, fenced in with upturned glass bottles.
After some research on my return home, the woodland project is called ‘Nourish’, and is run for communities that often face marginalisation or have difficulties living independently. The project provides volunteers with transferable skills and the opportunity to spend time with people who are possibly facing the same problems as they themselves are, whilst building what is potentially a self-sufficient garden – complete with beehives! What I found the area offered, was a place right in the heart of nature which showed a whole host of creative and practical creations that the volunteers had worked towards. For further information, you can check out the Nourish website at: http://www.nourishcic.co.uk 🙂
Below you will find some of the photographs of the artworks I found here. The canvases were almost all found unattached, leaning against the bases of trees.
This piece, with what seems like a large bulbous ‘nose’ seems almost Scottie Wilson-esque?
The way the trees were almost ‘growing over’ the paintings really made it seem as if the works were meant to be there.
 
In this photograph you can see the entrance to the woven ‘den’, complete with door!Â
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