we gave food: salads, sandwiches, wraps, yoghurts, pastries, to over ten thousand over recent years. Michael Mapp ran painting workshop, we planted another three hundred bulbs with MPGA and RHS support,we ran book exchange. with Francis Bios. We have given Awards: Bashabi Fraser best poetry voice in desert: writing response to Covid! remember Sarah Everard, Caroline Weller, Jenny Sablayan, nurse, early 2020 busdrivers, worst affected group of all key workers. Awards should be abstract in our times,to humbly commemorate dead, or alive. Calum who was in Africa now writes detective fiction, highlights refugees, poets in motion, Tania Skarynkina of Belarus resistance, Ant Howell highlights or Jean. I don't pretend to know the most Ethical Poetry, so random eloquence or moments of beauty will do. Were we always woken as communities, self understanding?
Daily we started naming all key workers at our Memorial...so we .. feel the presence of those who made the ultimate sacrifice like ... soldiers and civilians before. Pleasure in honesty. If the good die young then we are dead without naming them hourly...
Gary March, who sculpted for St
George's Chapel, Windsor, chosen by the Queen as winner of the competition is now considering a Memorial Wall. He also is, appropriately, a Jamaican-Englishman, representing manyBAME carers/ keyworkers. Highly motivated professionals who believe life isn't more difficult: helping and caring is easier. We extend olive branches to fresh cultural innovators, defending real diversity of faiths and belief in nature too..
Our gardens welcome all community, following East Enders on Cable Street, who ran facists out of town. We pride ourselves on outstanding planting and therapy to guarantee that all community feels involved. "Thank you!"say bus drivers."You are doing something really special to uplift and help so many people; may the 'Rose Memorial Garden' continue to bring peace, love and solace." Virginia
Remember Everard ...Keyworkers
Battersea was heavily hit by bombs in the Second World War, with many deaths, and last year in 2019, the numbers killed were read out, each and every one, by the Pastor of the Christchurch, which is close by, in the presence of Marsha de Cordova and local councillors. The V2 bomb that hit the area meant rebuilt and the Memorial constructed for Battersea.
Now we find support from those bringing bay tree, rose or lavender and children learning what plants are good here. Photos by Michael Mapp, Andre Sarabandi
Gifts and such
Many have jumped to help each other and feel more connected. As recently arborealists tell tree roots work together, providing nutrients to the most needy. Bus driver union Chief, Bobby Morton, wrote moved that a memorial focuses on those key workers worst hit. Drivers rest in the garden, start or finish shifts at the adjacent stop next to the park. The solace of growing lavender, sages, thyme and spreading health and medicine. Photo Andre Sarabandi
Fountain?
What about a Memorial Fountain to key workers? Told water tap and fountain overdue...yet strangeIy the practical questions have made us thrive. The blur of expectations and practical pushe us to be more self-reliant and resilient. How strange that feels, when the forecast for politics was that empire and desire to control, 'lord over' others to promote the wealth of a few has actually pushed a wedge of distrust toward those who claimed they serve our interests, against nurses, carers who mostly are black, volunteers, like ecological gardener who built up Bramford and came to aid.
We're returning to Mother Earth!
Wednesday, 22nd April was World Earth Day and started us
wondering if we should build our garden ourselves
Battersea Memorial Garden has been neglected for decades, but we value ourselves capable of change instead of laying blame. We read the names out daily of keyworkers roadsweepers, shopkeepers, teachers, nurses, doctors and local victims, 327 in the Uk to date. Watering all roses that were dying in great number in April, we developed a rota to clean as well. Bring us compost: fruit peelings, eggshell. Engaging Sacred Heart and Christchurch Primary schools, appreciating pollinators in this time of world crisis. The local council does not yet recycle food waste as others worldwide! Africans, Asians, Middle Easterners, Jamaicans are key to this place of reflection, including teachers, nurses and bus drivers, who have relaxed and meditated in the Christchurch Gardens in recent months. It has an intangible element of the citizens in the War, ever present and has become a place of reflection for those experiencing bereavement. Charlie started in Berlin finding over a million pounds to help homeless in the legendary People's Theatre, Edinburgh, Camden People's, Riverside Studios, Young Vic, Fluxx, set up Acton Cinema and Forums, touting plays with Jean Findlay, Jeremy Weller,of homeless to Paris Pompidou, Berlin and with Susan Saradon in US we know the sense of urgency of having to help others 'keep good faith', as Camus put it, faith that we are in touch with those carrying traumatic wounds we incline toward forgetting or evading. Also wrote, edited and translated for the Guardian, Evening Standard and other papers.
As a Memorial Garden we remember living key workers each biography, who have lost loved ones. Stories demand to be heard, children and partners who still work in NHS or care should be equally given access to their healing
*Help us help ourselves*
The big day is coming: a shared, sacred heart, if we accept animals and plants to survive.
The next generation of children depends on what we learn. Working hard for key and foreign workers subject to unjust scrutiny, as they are more disciplined, as bees, pollinating and the focus of our Century. We plan meadows and replant bulbs that Christchurch Primary School children helped, digging them deeper. Above all organic composting, grit , soil, gravel gardeners use for improvement.
Ask not what Mother Earth can do for you but what you can do for Mother Earth..introducing lavender, sage and thyme.
Andre as Persian knows Green the colour of Paradise Gardens.
Educating with Andre's crayons, pencils, rubbers, sharpeners, plasticene for the children to play with on World Girls' Day, ecologist of soul. The blurring of images of light represent migrants' sense of unclear borders and the way we redefine ourselves standing in the light. We talk about flower beds whose repose like ours in bed is to grow the same as flowers. In French lit and in German Blumenbett, always associating flowers with a place of rest. As we have such a beautiful Memorial I suggest we place a suite of rooms and stair in the storeroom to the flat roof, and bedroom with starry view, where the birds perch and smaller balcony connected to a master bedroom. The innocence of our dreams like images, we watch ourselves watching. Eagle and Owl collate the apotheosis of history, carrying like storch a basket, like eagles carry Prometheus' liver. Like a black American carrying the soil filled with blood and tears as record.
365.000 €
We are a community of ecologists of spirit, as well as Earth
©Copyright. Photos by Andre Sarabandi and Michael Mapp All rights reserved