Adventurous gardening
Dori Miller’s passion for horticulture has inspired unusual show gardens for Oxfam and Q-CAT
My passion for gardening comes from my parents, who ran a nursery and market garden plus an extensive vegetable and flower garden. Although not Quakers, their life was a model of simplicity and reverence for the natural world. The Quaker testimonies, particularly simplicity, underpin every garden I make.
Teamwork
Community was important in my two previous show gardens, involving a large team of experts and volunteers – the Quaker Concern for the Abolition of Torture (Q-CAT) garden will be no exception. For instance, my family is heavily involved: Howard (elder son) is an architect who, apart from having brilliant design ideas, can draw up the picture and plan needed for the application. So can Hugh (younger son) who, as a designer/carpenter, made all the bespoke woodwork and was co-designer for our first garden. Tom, my husband, grew show-quality vegetables and coordinated the Chester Growers for the Oxfam garden. Our daughter, Liz, has a great idea for next year…
I absolutely love working with them and with the many experts and volunteers who make up the team.
We have had sponsorship of: plants; bespoke sculpture, ironwork and woodwork; hard landscaping; contracting and expert advice.
The choir I belong to, ‘A Handbag of Harmonies’, has played a huge role in both gardens and has continued to support Oxfam’s Grow campaign after the show.
In heading up my ‘dream team’, I used the template of Meeting for Worship for Business – I tried to discern the feeling of the Meeting when decisions were to be made. With so many experts on the job (all very bright young people!) there could have been major differences of opinion, but it all went amazingly smoothly.
In short, making show gardens has surprised me into ‘living adventurously’.
‘When the waters rise’
In 2010, my first Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Tatton Show garden (a small garden called a ‘back to back’) was to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the inspirational Chester choir mentioned above. During Show week, I was asked by Oxfam to design a garden for exhibiting in 2011.
I was delighted to accept, as I loved doing the Handbags garden, and helping women combat climate change, as part of Oxfam’s Grow campaign, appealed strongly. Oxfam’s purpose, to reduce poverty and suffering, is at one with the Quaker testimonies of equality and justice.
Inspired by Oxfam’s work in parts of the world prone to flooding, we decided to show adaptations to flooding. We used British materials, in line with Oxfam’s (and our own) desire for a low carbon footprint. ‘When the waters rise’ was born.
It was important that most of the garden should be flooded, with wetland plants to give context. To be included in the garden were: a shelter on stilts, with a green roof growing crops; crops on rafts and in portable baskets; recycled containers used as planters; and a mound terraced with continuous hazel hurdling, to create level areas for crops to be grown on sloping ground. Every available space was to be ingeniously planted, showing how, even in adverse conditions, it is possible to grow edible plants.
With a dream team in place, the garden went together almost without a hitch and was awarded an RHS Gold medal. Of the judges’ feedback, the phrases I treasure are that the garden had soul and that it was a magical space. The garden received maximum BBC coverage, being featured on my favourite TV programme, Gardener’s World. Oxfam were delighted with the publicity for their Grow campaign.
After the Oxfam garden, Howard and I formulated four principles that we would adhere to in designing subsequent show gardens. They had to be: for important causes; architecturally adventurous (Howard); horti-culturally adventurous (me); and allow visitor access.
The Q-CAT garden
I am a member of Heswall Meeting, which, as part of Wirral and Chester Area Meeting, upholds Q-CAT (together with North Wales and Bristol Area Meetings). Q-CAT is today’s acronym for a concern that was espoused by the Yearly Meeting in 1974.
Howard co-designed the Oxfam garden with me and, as he has come up with the best ideas for the Q-CAT garden, I decided he should be the main designer for this one, with me as co-designer.
We felt that, although it would be a difficult subject for a show garden, we could incorporate our four self-imposed principles within it.
Visitors to RHS shows come to see gardens and not to be weighed down by distressing issues. With this in mind, we wanted to make it possible for them to experience slightly the feelings of being a victim of torture (claustrophobia, discomfort, feeling unsafe), and thereby sympathise with Q-CAT’s concern to end torture and complicity in torture. However, we didn’t want to ram it down their throats. They must be able to enjoy the open, safe, beautiful aspects of the garden even if they chose not to enter into the ‘dark side’. Mindful of ‘walk cheerfully’, the experience has to be predominantly a positive and optimistic one.
‘World without torture’
So, the visitor may enter the garden via a walkway bounded by high security fencing and land devastated by bombing. They skirt the back of a cell and enter it through a prison gate. They can, if they choose, listen to stories of victims of torture on quiet speakers, but are free to walk past these if they prefer.
The visitor exits the cell through a second prison gate, into a cultivated garden planted with white varieties of plants introduced by Quakers. This underlines the desire of Q-CAT to end torture, as well as the therapeutic benefit of a beautiful, peaceful garden. A sculpture of a figure releasing a dove sits outside the cell and further doves, made of ‘Lace Fence’, take off in flight across the chain link, providing a visual metaphor for Q-CAT’s hopes for a world without torture. Now the concrete security posts become hard landscaping that is trodden underfoot, which suggests the possibility of overcoming torture.
Around the cell is an ecological succession. The bombed area is quickly colonised by willowherbs and Buddleia, followed by more varieties of annual weeds, then slower growing species such as dock and clovers, together with saplings of birch, sycamore, hazel and oak, until it becomes a stand of oak woodland, showing how, in time, badly damaged land can heal itself.
Supporting the project
The RHS Tatton Show managers have approved the design, but considerable sponsorship from donations or in kind will be needed in order to realise it and raise awareness for Q-CAT.
We can update Friends on the project’s progress, and welcome interest, support and suggestions, from individual Friends and Meetings via Hannah Chambers, a Heswall Friend who is coordinating the Q-CAT garden mailing list: hannah.koroni@gmail.com
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