Building Communities Through Gardening

We are delighted to welcome a new face to our team of volunteers. Susie Sandover will be joining us from April to develop the community garden at our Centre on Greyhound Road. Susie has lived in many areas of the world, planting trees and creating gardens along the way. She now hopes that, alongside a community of gardeners at Age UK Hammersmith & Fulham, she can help develop our outdoor space to create “a place full of colour and life.” A place where people can sit, talk, rest quietly amongst nature and benefit from that “gentle, life-giving experience” which comes from being in a garden.

Walking down the Fulham Palace Road from Hammersmith tube, with traffic whizzing overhead and every available postage-stamp sized plot crowded with houses, offices and shops, it is hard to imagine that almost half of London is open green space. However, in terms of our own piece of green, Londoners are less likely to have access to outdoor space than the rest of the UK, as one fifth of the capital’s households do not have a garden of their own.

Over the last year, our garden at Greyhound Road has been quietly getting on with its own thing. Birds have nested, plants flowered, trees have shed their leaves and the garden has undergone its annual dormancy. However, following months of hibernation, plants have begun budding, insects have stirred on warm afternoons and the tell-tale activity of birds scuffling around in the flower borders all announce the arrival of spring. A full cycle of life has taken place, although very few have been able to witness it, with our doors remaining closed for much of last year. To Susie it is a new place to discover; a ‘secret garden’ whose space she is excited to learn about.

During lockdown, having access to green space outside has never seemed more important: to exercise, connect with the world outside our four walls and nurture our wellbeing. For Susie, gardens have always been important places. Her father was an avid gardener and she spent summer holidays with her grandmother in Jersey, where the garden was full of fruit trees and flowers of all description. Little did she know, as a child sampling those summer fruits of the Channel Islands, that the excitement of gardening would provide her with joy for a lifetime.

In her role as the wife of a Libyan diplomat, Susie travelled to many parts of the world, developing her knowledge and love of gardening and an understanding of the environmental importance of trees and wild spaces. With her husband, Susie was involved in the essential work of the United Nations Environment Programme, based in Nairobi, Kenya. It was here that she became acutely aware of the environmental importance of planting trees, thus establishing a life-long passion for tree-planting in the many places she has lived in the world.

While in India, Susie took inspiration from the gardens of the Presidential Palace in New Delhi, especially Lady Hardinge’s beautiful perfumed garden. The possibility of a sensory garden of our own is just one of Susie’s ideas. Moreover, along with other friends, Susie was instrumental in establishing a garden in Mother Theresa’s orphanage in Old Delhi. This provided the children with the opportunity to develop gardening skills, gain a sense of purpose in their daily lives and simply have fun, a commodity which was otherwise in short supply.

Susie believes that the garden is a place where we can all be children again. An opportunity to enjoy the tactile pleasure of handling plants and the excitement of watching seeds pushed into the earth develop into new plants for our gardens, windowsills or balconies. She feels that the development of our community garden must be led by the people who use the space and is keen to get ideas from others who use the Centre or would like to enjoy the garden. Over the years, many people have spent time caring for and tending our garden including, most recently, Paula and her team who have beautifully restored the kitchen garden. Therefore, alongside the work of our existing, dedicated volunteers, we are delighted at the prospect of having Susie to help us develop our community garden.

For Volunteer Coordinator, Emily, Susie’s arrival as a new volunteer has come at the perfect time, with the centre springing back into new life after the dormancy of lockdown. In Emily’s words: “We are incredibly excited to have Susie coming on board to give some much-needed love to our community garden. We hope to create a space that engages the senses, something everyone can enjoy. A little oasis. Susie has experience creating green spaces all over the world, and we are excited for her to turn her green fingers to our outdoor space, and no doubt inspire the involvement of other budding gardeners.”

Susie believes that now more than ever such spaces are needed: “Maybe because of this lockdown… having somewhere to sit outside has really become so important; and especially people who are maybe living alone, in flats and can’t get out to walk in parks and places like that. So a little place that people could come and sit in the sun would be wonderful.”

Until the doors of Greyhound Road open again, our secret garden remains a pleasure deferred and a little mystery for Susie. At the moment, she says: “I have a blank piece of paper.” We are excited that with Susie’s inspiration and experience, coupled with the input of others, we can start to write the next chapter for our community garden. We would love you to join us.

Susie will be volunteering on Wednesdays and hopes others will eventually join her.

If you are inspired to get involved with our community garden once the project is fully off the ground, please drop volunteer coordinator Emily an email to express your interest in this new project. emily@ageukhf.org.uk.