The Shoe Box Community Garden
Written by Tom Crossland
There is something so essentially human about acts like running and gardening. Working with the earth and cultivating crops for food, alongside movement and migration, are both activities that have held the hand of humanity for as long as we have been looking at the stars. In times gone by, it was these very patterns of the stars and phases of the moon which informed us of when to best plant certain seeds and crops. So it is no surprise that these two simple acts create such wonderful habitats for communities to grow and for people to connect, especially when you consider what helps both to thrive. That sense of connection; to yourself, the people around you and to something ‘other’, a collective purpose, however that manifests itself.
Some of my earliest memories are running around outside, nature permeating my peripherals throughout most of my childhood. I used to run around Granny’s allotment, bursting into it with a sense of awe and wonder, the other side of the gate was a secret garden that was alive with curiosity. All manner of old, ragged, sometimes broken things were used to cover or support different plants and crops. It seemed like anything that didn’t work in the real world, worked in here. Add to that the idea that the plants in the ground could be taken into the house and become dinner was, still is, magic to me. I was lucky later in life that my mum carried that tradition on by making a small raised bed in our back garden. She would grow squash, courgette, salads and greens and proudly cook them up. My lack of enthusiasm for them at the time is, regretfully, probably more a reflection of being a moody teenager among other things, but the pride and happiness it brought her always translated. So: Mum, please consider this a thank you for keeping that idea alive. Fast forward to now and we share an allotment space; we plan what we want to grow each year together and split it all across the three or four different plots we have built.
I started creating small allotment spaces out of recycled cardboard about four years ago, when I moved into a flat that had a lot of derelict land at the back. It was your classic overrun, neglected piece of land: all hard soil, long grass and weeds. I was introduced to a gardener on YouTube called Charles Dowding, who not only has a beautiful market garden, but an even more beautiful view on how we can work with nature to grow food. This ‘No Dig’ approach allows the orchestra of life that exists in the soil to be left intact because, right under our feet, is an entire universe of life. There is a plethora of worms and minute insects that decompose and shift tides of dirt simultaneously. It has infinite webs of mycelium that are essential for the sharing of nutrients and distribution of minerals, all helping billions of miles of roots grow in the depths and send shoots up into the light. Soil is, to me anyway, our most precious resource.
By using this approach the soil is protected from digging by placing a base layer of cardboard straight onto the ground where you want the plot to go. The bigger and thicker the cardboard, the better (think: IKEA furniture sized boxes). Once you add a thick top layer of compost on to that and raked it out a bit, you can, after watering it, start gardening.
The real magic of this method happens in the dark. The layer of cardboard and compost denies light to the grasses, weeds and other plants that lie underneath it. As they slowly start to decompose, they provide food for the eco-system that was already in the soil to begin with. All those hardily forged worm tunnels and insect highways, that network of mycelium and root systems, working perfectly well as it is, remain intact. The soil itself is then continually enriched by the decomposing matter from above, with the wealth of nutrients being redistributed by the well established and undisturbed habitat that was there already.
The idea of building a space like this out of old shoes boxes had, as a runner, a satisfying and poetic synchronicity to it that also appealed to the practical side of my creative process. The consistent shape of the shoe boxes could create the perfect raised bed. (A long, often regular rectangular box made out of wooden decking or sleepers, that is filled in with soil. A common plot at any allotment site). So I set about sourcing as much cardboard as I could. Using my recovery runs,which I handily planned to coincide with recycling day, I would scout out large pieces of cardboard that hadn’t been collected yet. While also keeping my eye out for the odd shoe box, peeking out of the piles of recycling like a golden ticket.
The generosity of someone locally fly tipping a set of wooden drawers one morning, now meant that I had a perfectly shaped container to place all the shoe boxes in, once I had collected enough.
When I was approached by Mae and Abi from the hylo Local Champions Fund, it was like the gardening angels had seen my sketches and placed the perfect opportunity into my hands. It takes a huge amount of trust and understanding to listen to someone essentially ask for a boat load of dirt and any old shoe boxes you have lying around, let alone to use them to make a community garden out the back of some old flats. So, Thank you guys so much.
Now, with that fortuitous find of a fly tipped set of drawers, some empty hylo shoe boxes and a bit of assembling, there is a thriving community garden where there once was nothing. All manner of Kale, Spinach, Cabbage, Onion, Potatoes, Rocket, Broad Beans and Carrots have found a habitat in what was once just that: an old set of wooden drawers, some redundant shoe boxes and some dirt. Those three items, reimagined and reused, have brought people together over something human and real.
As I write this I have noticed that somebody has put some protective netting over the plants, to stop pests getting to there before we do. I see the other families using the space to introduce their kids to the idea of planting and picking food, that same idea that set off fireworks of curiosity in my head while I ran around my Granny’s allotment as a kid.
Creating habitats and communities like this, by reimagining the space and materials we have around us, is a practice in creativity as much as it is positivity. It can, in some circumstances, even turn the rubbish being thrown out onto the street into something that grows food for families and builds community for people. Building a space to come together around those most humble of human activities and feel a connection with the earth, the soil and all of the life that it supports.
Follow Tom on Instagram: @Petal.toes
