Thursday 3 November 2011

Coastal Gardening Society update

Been coughing mightily and had a head full of cotton wool with a cold which turned into a chest infection and left me wheezing and sounding like Kermit and not in a good way.. so I apologise to anyone who thinks there's too many fish recipes on here and not enough gardening lately.

Coastal Gardening Society is not ya average horticultural society, it's not about biggest marrows or the best home-grown strawberry jam. It's not traditional, it's new.

Coastal Gardening Society is a member of the Coastal Communities Alliance and one of the aims is to get communities involved in regeneration, using horticulture as a way of involving local people in the regeneration of their coastal community. Regeneration shouldn't be something imposed on a community, which doesn't involve them and seems only to benefit weekending DFLs (Down From Londons).

At the same time, the gap between long-term residents of coastal communities and incomers needs to be bridged, because a divided community is good for no-one. Whereas new money and talent help pull a stagnating seaside place out of the doldrums.

Coastal Gardening Society is about gardening in a maritime microclimate. We live in a special environment so let's celebrate that and basically, get stuck in, to everything on offer. So it's not 100% gardening. But that's not a bad thing if you get the curator of a museum giving you a personal guided tour of a smuggler's town or the director of a nature reserve teaching you about native coastal plants after lunch in a 16th century pub, surely ?

But gardening won't be neglected. No, there will be plant clinics with plant societies to give advice and talks on desiging gardens, composting etc.

For the next few days I'm concentrarting on the website. I'd rather have a few pages I'm perfectly happy with than lots I'm not.

No comments:

Post a Comment