BULLINGDON PRISON GARDEN PROJECT
13 December 2024
by Mabvuto Hardy
INSIDE OUT at HMP Bullingdon
Breaking ground, festival season
After nearly a year of planning, fundraising and discussions, the Nature Effect team were finally able to break ground at the Prison Visitor Centre in time for Christmas.
It’s been a busy few weeks for Laura, our director, garden designer and plantswoman. Mark, our landscape contractor, worked flat and tirelessly through rain, snow and whatever stormy weather was thrown at him. This was attested to even by the curious work men and women around the HMP grounds who are keen to see what is taking shape and all the comments were positive.
Laura invited a group of Christmas elves, Marta, Charlotte, Phil, Chloe, Marilyn and yours truly to lend a helping hand with the work on various days. Even the grey wet sky could not deter them from getting stuck in.
As chief architect and designer, Laura got everyone assigned to duties, planting bulbs, plants, reinforcing the fence, filling up with soil, watering roses and other plants, securing any wooden posts that needed some work done or tidying up any sharp edges on the wooden structures. The ground around the outside hedging saplings was covered with cardboard and then fine bark mulch to give the new plants a good start and to let roots grow protected from the encroaching grass.
There was also collecting of fallen wood from the nearby woodlands to secure the gaps in the dead hedge to protect potential adventurous children from attempting to explore or wander beyond the permitted grounds.
The yard transformation is to be seen to be admired even with the plants not yet established. It does not need a drone camera to capture the sense of what is to become.
There is a new tricycle track path for the young, and a mound with log steps to scale the top and a slide. For those who fancy playing house and domestic or culinary hand, there is a Sand pit kitchen with all the utensils.
As it’s the festival season of giving, there is more to come, a vegetable bed is going to be completed. A wind chiming bamboo instrument will be installed and bring music to the ears. There are more trees to arrive and be planted and excitingly a living willow dome will be erected.
As this is a space aimed at the younger at heart visitors, we are hoping to engage them in planting and growing vegetables, painting a mural, and maybe creating some things to take home and talk to their loved ones about on their visits.
There is a family day planned for February 2025 and Governor Laura Sapwell gave her thumbs up and her seal of approval after a brief tour with the team in the prison who have helped make this happen – Josh, Sebastian, Zena and Jacky the playworker from PACT.
Everyone agreed an official opening of the visitors Centre should take place when the weather improves and plants have had a chance to bed in and we can invite the many funders and supporters who have helped sow the seeds of what will become a magic garden. Everyone is keen to see what will happen in the INSIDE garden which will hopefully start early next year.
To support this project, please visit this link.
