Now this is what the garden is for: respite from all your responsibilities, except plants. Oh, and each other.
We’ve started, with City and Hackney Carers, a gardening course for unpaid carers. The idea is to learn about gardening but, more importantly, to have a break in peaceful, undemanding surroundings. Caring can be relentless; no matter how much you love the person you care for, it can wear you out and, I think, you sometimes feel you are suffering a version of the same affliction. I feel, for example, I have had a stroke or some kind of brain storm since my mother had hers. Anyway, gardening, as anyone knows who has been in a garden, is pretty much the solution to any problem and we want more people to feel that calm pleasure you get from being outside in nature – and it’s so nice to be able to share that peace with local carers.
We’ve been lucky with the weather and on our second session we potted up seedlings and made cuttings.
Cordwainers Garden 