Garden Retrospective & “Weeding Out Wisdoms” Launch

By Ardis –

A pair of soil-covered hands hold an opened pea pod containing seven small green peas. Under the hands a wooden table with three chopping boards (yellow, green and purple) and several empty pea shells are visible. The right hand is in a grey brace.

Since March this year we have been gathering weekly in the yard to tend to our plants together. This has included feeding and turning the compost, watering, weeding, creating support structures, drinking mint tea, shovelling soil, worm hunting, flower picking, garden bed painting, making up songs, planting seedlings, and repotting them.

A big project at the start of the growing season was to move all the garden beds that were by the wall of our building, since they contributed to a damp problem and blocked gutter maintenance. After a few weeks of soil shovelling we were ready for the plants to go in the ground, and excited to start planting seeds.

Several potted bean plants are sitting on a windowsill, their green leaves stretching towards the frosted glass window behind them. On the window, green writing reads "Rumpus Room Bean Race!!! If dry please give them a drink".

We’ve learnt a lot from the people who come to help in the garden. From practical tips about compost care and bean supports, to learning to sit with the marvel of watching things grow and wiggle around us.

A highlight this year has been having the opportunity to invite artists to respond to the garden, and celebrate it together, during Glasgow International. You can find the blog post from our Loose Tomatoes in the Back Garden exhibition here, and the bandcamp release of Nadia’s album Digging Where We Stand of songs using recordings from the Spring’s garden club here.

A white person in a purple head scarf and dark shirt is taking a pizza out of our homemade pizza oven — © Eoin Carey

Angel from the studio, a white person wearing glasses and a camouflage top is smiling to someone outside the photo. They're surrounded by people looking at the pickles on the table in front of them, the garden is visible in the background. — © Eoin Carey

A group of people are sitting in a circle playing various instruments. On the left a Palestine flag is flying, and in the background you can see Rumpus studio and a big green tree. — © Eoin Carey

A young brown person is handing freshly harvested garlic to an adult hand. — © Eoin Carey

Getting this chance to celebrate the solstice with our wider community with pizzas, live music, garden drinks, pickles, weaving, and progressively sillier face painting gave us a lot of energy to keep looking after the garden together.

A picture of the outside of Rumpus Room, a beige building with some colourful leaves made from wood scattered across the facade. In front several people are gathered around garden beds with green plants in them. The front of the image reveals a table with a map of the garden.

Through our collective care we enjoyed an abundant harvest this year. In a rough order, we’ve been eating radishes, mint, chard, strawberries, oregano, dandelion, cleavers, garlic, lemon verbena, borage, mongri seed pods, daikon radish, chives, spinach, rocket, basil, rhubarb, kale, spring onion, black currant, beans, peas, nasturtium, tomatoes, potato, cabbage and probably more from the garden this year.

Our tactic of abundantly filling up the beds seems to work, and compared to many gardening friends our beds are kept relatively slug free, due to being set up on concrete.

On a wooden table red sauce, white fusilli pasta and a garden salad are lined up. In the top left corner there are some human and dog feet visible.

Bright pink pickled radishes are floating in a glass jar, illuminated by the sun and held by a white hand

We have been enjoying this abundant harvest at Garden Club sessions, at studio team lunches, and also passing onto friends, passersby and local food points. We’ve been pickling our produce more than in previous years, and froze some of the more abundant crops in preparation for our big harvest feast.

We held our feast last weekend, on the Autumn Equinox. Everybody who took part in growing the garden this year was invited to bring a dish to the potluck, and we also cooked on site with the produce available, making nasturtium pesto pasta (a constantly returning favourite this year), rhubarb syrup for a garden drink, garlic fried green beans and bonfire potatoes.

Around 20 people are sitting around a long table dressed in a yellow & red tablecloth, eating together from paper plates. The table is outside in Rumpus Room's yard, surrounded by Glaswegian tenement buildings.

People are standing around tables waiting to serve themselves food. In the foreground of the picture you can see flowering calendula and mooli plants.

It was a very sweet celebration of the hard work everybody has been putting into growing food and pollinator-friendly flowers on this patch of concrete, and of the bonds that have formed between us all through this work. We appreciate each and every one of you that has contributed, in any way!

And big thanks to Vegware UK Community Fund that generously donated the compostable cups and plates we used!

Another glowing highlight of the garden club this year has been having Elouise with us during it! Elouise has been on placement with us from the Curatorial Practise course at GSA, and as part of her time here she created a zine about the garden, funded by the Grow Wild youth grant.

Elouise's zine is captured in front of a garden bed with mooli flowers. Orange text on a light green background, with a blue border

She launched her gorgeous publication Weeding Out Wisdoms at the harvest potluck, which documents the plants that grow in our space, both in the garden beds and cracks in the concrete.

It’s a thoughtful account that reflects on how we assign value to the things growing around us, and you can find a scanned version of the risoprint here.

The Garden Club sessions are now paused until the next growing season starts, but we will continue making things with the remaining produce for our staff lunches, and donating the excess.

We hope we can continue our work in the garden next year. It brings a steady rhythm to our year, nutritious meals to our neighbourhood, and a chance to slow down to notice the small things.

For now though, it’s time for our growing beds and our gardeners to enjoy some rest.