Community garden
On arrival as Curate at Christ Church Toxteth Park, an urban parish in Liverpool I was aware from my first visit that something radical had to happen outside the building.
As I came to know the wider community around Toxteth Park I recognised that most of them thought Christ Church had in fact closed. Not a great advert for a diverse, relatively young and edgy Christian community! My initial response on seeing this ‘ode to tarmac’, was “this is nothing a good jackhammer can’t fix!”. I was held to that comment when I later arrived to begin the curacy. “When are we digging up the tarmac?”, I kept being asked.
A design was done, and approved, the archdeacon consulted, and then funding sought. Having enquired of a couple of funders nothing was forthcoming. A plea was made to the congregation, for the first phase, and an anonymous donor came forward with funds. “I feel God calling me to give this money”, they said. As I looked out that Sunday at the congregation, I saw a landscape architect, a landscape gardener, the wife of
a man who ran an allotment project in Norris Green, several allotment holders, and a retired night club owner who is a keen caterer. Fertile ground!
A date was set, a mini-digger hired (better than any
jackhammer) and people turned out in numbers. In a few short hours, tarmac was ripped up, borders created, and ten tonnes of topsoil were spread out ready for plants coming in the next day. The community had been galvanised into action.
The garden has a strong theme which speaks of the community of Toxteth on a number of
levels. The garden was created in the year celebrating the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery and the planting reflects this. Liverpool forms one of three corners of a reconciliation triangle, together with Richmond Virginia in the U.S.A. and Benin in West Africa. Liverpool benefited hugely from the slave trade, and as the original
congregation of Christ Church parish would have been ship owners and merchant traders it is not a great assumption to suggest that some of them would have benefited from the wealth accumulated through this means.
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green and pleasant land
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