We are so excited to have been selected to design and create a new border at the Gardeners’ World Live Exhibition, from 13-16 June 2024 at the NEC in Birmingham.
Our border garden design, ‘Common Ground’, reflects our work in exploring social and environmental repair within the context of post-industrial canalside sites in Digbeth. Working collaboratively with artist collective Cooking Sections we have been exploring the Canalside site through a series of year-long artistic commissions.
This Canalside heritage site literally holds Digbeth’s history in its soil. As such, the land here contains toxic heavy metals, including lead and arsenic, at levels that are above the safe limits for humans, other animals, and plants. Yet despite this, life flourishes here.
Humans disturb the soil, and campion and celandine spring to life. Nettles host thousands of caterpillar dinners and the clover, willowherb, and achillea bob with pollinators. Among these hardy, predictable characters we’ve added experimental phytoremediators; sunflowers and mustard greens, water Crowfoot, and red fescue.
