Putting our school garden together

Our school garden has been through several iterations. At different times, different people have done different things to it.

The point with a garden is that it is a habitat. You have to manage it or it will revert to scrub, then woodland and finally it will be a forest one day. That is what it wants to do. A garden is what happens when human beings have a plan with a piece of land and keep doing things to it.

With our school garden, we are lucky because gardening is part of the Waldorf curriculum. If not gardening, then being outdoors and farming, using your body, being in touch with the world around you. Gardening fulfills many of these aims, plus it also gives back but in a slow way which teaches everyone, including the adults patience. It is a labour of trial and error.... and a lot of love. It is reading the place and being realistic. And not trying to do everything at once.

This was our school garden when Oisin was Class One - which makes it
almost seven years ago!

It's funny to see how things have not changed. in where there were beds - there are now beds. Admittedly smaller raised beds. But beds.

John McCormick and thhe then Class One teacher Tracy

I must get a photograph of the boys carrying eight foot logs cos that is what they are doing now. I wonder if they remember doing the raised beds from seven years ago. Seven years ago is not long if you think about it, and yet these children are all now taller than i am!

This September

Fast forward seven years and for some reason the beds disappeared. However, over the years stuff happened to the place. Potatoes were planted, carrots too... as a teacher and with the help of volunteers, from the work side and from the they know what they are doing side, we have considered the curriculum, the workload - what is possible, what is required and then come up with a plan.

The plan has still not been adopted as yet, we are in the process of getting everyone to look at it and tell us what they think. However, to date, the constant thought in our minds is, what happens if tomorrow we were no longer in the school, then what? This is because the biggest problem is if  someone leaves, if the person is no longer there to do the work, then everything just slides backwards and becomes an unmanageable mess. So as we plan and create, we also have one eye on, we can always just cover stuff with black plastic and let it wait, so that no work is wasted, till the next person comes along, whenever that is. Sort of Sleeping Beauty the place.

Our beds as of yesterday
If you look across the path, you can see woodchips being spread on the
mini woodland area

So the idea is, if for some reason it was no longer possible to look after the garden, all we would have to do is cover the beds in black plastic and they would be there for someone to come along and bring it back to life again. Of course the plan is that this will not happen as we are all planning to stay on board for a very long time. We are planning to keep plugging away, until we have reached a holding pattern and then we are going to maintain it for two years. Read the place and when those two years are over, to start getting creative.

Gradually does it

Because we don't have a big budget, we cannot do an assault on the garden. So everything has to be done slowly and gradually. We don't have diggers or cranes or decking - not that we would want it anyway because really these giant things, if you are not careful create unsustainable gardens. Much better to do things slowly so that we can correct mistakes which have been made in little bits.

It is very inspirational really for me as a person. We also think a lot about the summer. The garden cannot go to seed over the summer and all the produce should not become inedible, unless it is meant to be sacrificial crop.

I could not sleep last night, i don't know why. Things have arrived at a stable place for me. It is weird. I no longer become elated with happiness in an uncontrollable way - similarly, i also do not end up diving into the depths of misery. I don't want to say it feels like i am in charge of me, but at the same time, as the Tibetians say, it does feel like i am riding the wind-horse or lung-ta, with some skill. Horse riding has actually been really good for me. And of course the last couple of years has also been great. So much of learning has transpired. Especially learning when it is something i need to act on and something i can just leave for itself cos you know, not my circus, not my monkeys. And yet, it is also not shutting myself off from the world. It's kinda hard to describe.

I love the coming of spring. I have found this February not as difficult - well the retrograde was shit, but i think that this Lent, i said to myself, look, i have just been through a retrograde, i'll be damned if i go through Lent as well. I am not going through the misery of Lent - and so i decided i need to look for the beauty in the bleakness.

Time to get ready for school. I make plans now, but i no longer have this overwhelming need to feel they need to succeed. It is more a gentle knowing, a waiting and seeing while there is a doing. A deep patience. Endless boundlessness of skies. There is no dissatisfaction - things are what they are. Woven in between them is the strand of existence which is myself, it is both timeless and temporal. It feels like a good taste in my mouth, a good feeling in my heart.