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Village Gardens – Working In The Community – For The Community
The SHED show
Pots And Hanging Baskets
The Apprentice
Patients Hit Deck
Village Gardens – Working In The Community – For The Community
We have enjoyed another successful year. As we enter our 6th year we are proud to say – We’re still here. We would like to say a big thank you to all our regular and new customers.
The SHED show
Village Gardens (London) ltd has recently sponsored two art exhibitions, which have received positive coverage in the media, including BBC Radio.
The exhibitions SHED and SHED 2 have collected together the 'ideal sheds' of over fifty illustrators, designers, photographers and model makers, collectively known as the SHEDDISTS.
The works are all designed to fit together inside the cramped confines of authentic garden sheds, and celebrate the hand-made and the tinkered-with.
Included in the show are drawings, models, tightly scribbled plans, cages and collections of bottled memorabilia by Dominic Trevett, Tim Ellis, Lizzie Finn, John McFaul, Association of Illustrators award winners Andrew Baker, Geoff Grandfield, Simon Pemberton and Paul Slater, and Economist Cartoonist of the Year Morten Moerland.
SHED was originally conceived as part of last summer's Visions of Utopia exhibition in East London, curated by Steve Wheeler.
This event was centred around the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow and drew inspiration from Morris's novel News from Nowhere.
Invited by Steve to contribute a series of sheds to the event, illustrator and academic Andrew Baker undertook the mission of inviting friends and associates to fill the sheds with artwork. His idea was simple: produce a portrait of your shed (if you have one) or your ideal shed (if you don't).
The original Walthamstow SHED show took place inside the island theatre in Lloyd Park in September 2005. It was built on the goodwill of all the contributors, with major commitments from Linda Hughes, Cath Whippey and Dominic Trevett, and with the help of Village Gardens (London) Ltd.
The show recently traveled to the Visual Communication Gallery at UCE Birmingham as SHED 2 where it continued its growth - it now includes sheds by staff and students from Birmingham Institute of Art and Design.
Nick Everard of Village Gardens (London) ltd. has offered his unwavering support throughout both exhibitions. His help, advice and sponsorship has been an invaluable aid in making the exhibition come to fruition.
Andrew Baker, Curator of the shows, said "Without the help and enthusiasm of Nick and his colleagues I don't think the shows could have been the success they have been. He's always on hand for advice and has really put a lot of time and effort into making the shows happen on schedule".
Plans are underway to take the show to more galleries around the country. Long may it prosper.
You can find out more about the show if you visit the SHED Show 2 website.
Pots And Hanging Baskets - Don't Hang About! Order Now ...
Hanging baskets, pots and window boxes are the trade of Helen Collier, our link-up for the more colourful side of our business. Helen is a self-employed domestic gardener in the Wanstead area who has been studying design at the national gardening college in Enfield and she’s launching her designs for your patios and windows in Spring this year.
Her designs will be based around set themes – modern, cottage, etc – and colours to suit your individual taste and the style of your garden or courtyard.
Consultations are free and she aims to marry your budget with your aspirations for the garden. She’s taking orders now and throughout early spring on a first come first serve basis.
And Village Gardens are offering to install hanging basket hangers in the Walthamstow Village and Village Borders area free of charge over the next few months. You place an order, buy the hanger (anything between £2.50 and £10 each) and we’ll do the drilling and hanging.
The Apprentice
Young blood is always welcome at Village Gardens and it was fantastic to recruit 19-year-old Marcin Kwiatkowski at the start of 2005 as our first ever apprentice on the recent government apprenticeship scheme.
Marcin joined the company during spring last year and loved his job so much that he accepted the chance of making gardening his career. And from starting as the Maintenance Gardener’s Assistant he has worked his way up to being responsible for all our regular customers.
He’s in charge of lawn-mowing, shrub-trimming, pruning, weeding and general tidy-ups. His week includes a day release at the national gardening college, Capel Manor, in Enfield. And we’re proud of his efforts because he’s quite new to England and the language.
Patients Hit Deck
In August, Village Gardens constructed an area of decking for a local private hospital. Since there was very little in the way of a seating area in the grounds this is a much welcomed and needed improvement.
Patients now have the benefit of a nicely decked seating area to enjoy those sunny days and recuperate in the peaceful surround of the adjacent woodland.
Also, as part of this project, we renovated the paths around the hospital grounds.
These were in a poor state and were dangerous for the patients to walk on. The work involved removing over 300 heavy paving slabs and relaying the path with 20mm gravel. This also helped to improve the security of the hospital as people can be heard walking about on the gravel in the hours of darkness. We ended up moving 25 tonnes of gravel.
Tough job – but we got it done.
Are you wondering what we did with the slabs? Well we recycled them. They were given to a local charity – The Pump House Museum in Low Hall Lane E17, well worth a visit.