As inappropriately situated as they there are, something is still arrestingly beautiful about these giant mirrored structures. Their clean functional forms, with an attractive and dilapidated ordered array of giant poles and planks, makes them feel like timeless monoliths – both ancient and modern.
Something dramatic needs to happen to them though, for they’ll, in any case, only last for so long. And, very tentatively, that process has actually now begun.
I’ve never been a woodworker, but one of the great things about doing a Permaculture Design Course, is how it introduces you to ideas, knowledge and practical skills – all essential components of working on any gardening project. But this isn’t a typical gardening project, certainly not for one person alone anyway. The initial phase feels like it has to take its time to slowly and to organically grow into something meaningful and long lasting. Some solitary thinking, whilst also taking some advice, isn’t necessarily a bad thing for aspects of this, at least for some of the time. Sure, one can crack on with the process of simply gardening (and I have), but structures like these need a lot more thought.
The old livestock’s food store of the northernmost cattle shed, cleared by the departing farmers after they relinquished their control over it, was home for a short while to the flat packed polytunnel, dumped there by a forklift shuttle, detached from the huge lorry parked on the main road over a kilometre away in february.
Now that the tunnel had been completed, it was time to make some use of this space. The obvious role for it seemed to immediately be as a massive workshop space. Inspired by my PDC tutor James Chapman, and his practical woodworking experience, I set about creating a workbench made from pallets, and various pieces of garden “furniture” made from discarded wood and stumps from the fallen poplar tree. It also now doubles as a bicycle repair workshop, a cardboard storage and processing area for no-dig beds, a tool shed and a wood store for accumulating useful pieces of wood from around Bamff.
At one point I brought music into this space, listening and creating – instruments and speakers. Thinking about the future, I began to explore how creative worlds might collide with the walled garden. A future permaculture festival is something that I aspire towards, though is probably some years away, and these sheds – or part of them, will certainly be an important aspect of that. As they will also be for education and for various forms of crafting.
Their almost impossibly huge proportions make all of this feel somewhat daunting. For sure, any future reconfigurations must nevertheless be done in the simplest possible way. It’s almost certain that the southern shed will fully come down. Partly to open up that area to more sun, and partly to bolster the structure if the northern shed – but also to reduce the corrosive damage the it has on the beautiful garden wall – which would benefit so much from some new found freedom. The concrete hard standing at its base will then be a blank canvas for other, yet to be determined ideas. I could almost imagine a sculpture park there..but new structures that are more useful for the garden and other nearby projects will obviously take precedent!
The Bamff Walled Garden. 