Gardens
Karen’s gardens are designed and maintained to benefit both her customers and wildlife.
The creation of a habitat that fills with butterflies and birds is beautiful and life affirming.
The gardens are useful for the collection of scented herbs and edible flowers, also with a proportion of vegetables if required.
Composting and bird feeding are a part of the process.
The space may also be enhanced with artworks, wooden seating or a decorative table, a clay pizza oven, as well as none functional sculpture.
Gunnersbury Museum
Community walled garden
A residency over two years saw work carried out with the Education Department of the Museum, The Youth Justice Service, Corporate Team Building Days, and the general public.
Contributing to the Garden's Timeline we made a child- sized Iron Age Roundhouse and wattle enclosure, mosaics and a clay oven for the Roman period, and an insect house and green wood trellis for the growing areas.
Iron Age Roundhouse, made with the museum education dept to explore ancient architecture. These were the first shelters made in this part of the world from approx 500BC. Here, we used hazel greenwoods to make the wattle walls of the house and enclosure, and daubed the house was with a mix of clay, straw, manure and sand. the roof is make of ash and conifer brash, with an oak door.
Weir Road Community Art Gardens
This garden was created in a unloved part of the estate in South London. Over a year the garden and artworks were made with the community, to create a resource and a place where people come together, growing and harvesting food and composting.
BEFORE
AFTER
Pottersfield Park
These raised beds were commissioned whilst Rosie Boycott was Food Tsar for London.
Just by City Hall, this hand- shaped structure was planted and tended by the nearby housing association. Coin Street Housing were also involved in this major initiative to facilitate food growing in the city.
Thames Festival
Karen was Lead Artist/ Gardener for the Thames Festival: Feast on the Bridge over several years.
In 50 London schools new gardens were created and hundreds of pumpkins and other crops were grown. There was outreach work to community organisations such as Roots and Shoots, also in Housing Coops and Day Care Centres.
For Moveable Feast, 60 shopping trollies were dredged from the Thames. Shopping baskets and a boat were customised with showers and trellis work, planted with food and tended by different groups and schools, until Feast on the Bridge when Southwark Bridge was closed to traffic in September and all the mobile gardens came together.
A huge celebration with banqueting tables for 1000s people, fresh produce, performance, life sized ginger bread houses and a pumpkin competition judged by the Fortean Times was enjoyed by many Londoners.
Cambian Churchill Art Garden
CAMBIAN CHURCHILL HOSPITAL, SOUTH LONDON
Over two years Karen worked in this inpatient mental health hospital for men, for acute admissions and rehabilitation. Through weekly art gardening groups, permanent improvements were made to the hospital environment, transforming the outside space from a foul smelling smoking area to a lush garden filled with artworks. This work, in a neglected part of the hospital, was informed by the notion of an abandoned part/ shadow of the self which needs scrutiny and caring attention, for integration to take place.
Karen worked to raise the profile of the Arts in the hospital, creating exhibitions and showing client's work in the community and upkeeping artworks on the walls.
Feeding Station Boat
MERIDEN PARK, BIRMINGHAM
Private Gardens
