Eye - 22 March 2024
Elinor Smallman
A peaceful path
Peterborough Meeting’s garden has grown to be a gift for a whole community, after one Friend’s vision of the testimonies in flora.
Linda Elliot is one of the gardeners who developed the garden and shared the story with Eye.
She sets the scene: ‘Early in 2010, an attender had an idea… She was undertaking an RHS Certificate in Horticulture at the time and she noticed that the Meeting house garden was becoming rather neglected. Would the Quakers allow her and a fellow student on the RHS course to develop the garden?’
Happily, the Meeting gave the go-ahead and the Friend shared: ‘How she envisioned the garden being designed around the Quaker principles of simplicity, equality, community, peace, integrity and care for the environment. Different areas of the garden could be planted in a way to reflect each of the principles. For instance, the principle of “Peace” could be represented by planting a circle of seven silver birches (one for every continent) and seating could be arranged in the centre where people could sit and bring areas of conflict in the world into “the Light”.’
Friends employed a garden designer to put these ideas ‘into a coherent picture for the whole garden’. Over time, it began to take shape.
‘There was a great deal of clearing of tree saplings, ground elder, bindweed and bramble to be done first… where plants could be saved and placed elsewhere, they were carefully transplanted into new beds… People in the wider community also donated plants (to go in the equality and community flower beds)… Trees and shrubs formed a new backdrop to the planting, and a labyrinth was also designed and built out of discarded bricks from someone’s drive.’
The labyrinth had some unexpected help: ‘Prisoners on day release from Peterborough prison came to help in the development… One prisoner made it his task to build the labyrinth for us and week by week, he would lay the bricks in place. He was released before he had completed it, but still wanted to come back and finish it. We held a special opening ceremony for him when it was finally done.’
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