Could the Horniman Gardens bee any more friendly?

By Quetta Kaye

The new installation in front of the Horniman Museum has a variety of bee ‘hotels’ sited around raised beds of insect-attracting flowers in hexagonal (bee cell) frames, surrounded by a wildflower meadow. The centrepiece is a sculpture with nitrogen-dioxide absorbing properties, ‘Flower Girl’, created by Jasmine Pradissitto, a painter and physicist, who has been pioneering pollution-absorbing sculptures to address an increasingly Anthropocene world.

In the main part of the Gardens, the dry Prairie area continues to dazzle with its colourful display and frame of fluttering grasses.

The Great Big SE4 and SE23 Raffle

Back in April, when we were under serious lockdown, and virtually all local shops were shut, a couple of local ladies, Amanda Pearce and Nicola Johnson, had the excellent idea to run an online raffle: It would generate income for local business and offer prizes for people to look forward to after lockdown.

In total they sold over £17,000-worth of tickets, with all the money invested in future prizes from local businesses. 

As well as generating income for local independent businesses, it was a great reminder of all the wonderful independent shops in Forest Hill, Honor Oak, Crofton Park and Brockley. With hundreds of people entering the raffle to win random prizes, it was heart-warming to see such community spirit during the toughest of times.

Daily publicity for these businesses occurred via social media and provided information about which shops were gradually able to reopen.

Sadly, not all shops have been able to continue after lockdown, and we have seen a few businesses, such as Rob’s Barbers, not reopening since lockdown, and the Dartmouth Arms closing its doors. 

The raffle, and the shop closures, are an important reminder that local independent businesses only survive if we use them.

Full disclosure: I won a voucher for drinks at Subplot 57, the bar underneath Leaf & Groove that has a newly opened garden space.

Gardening Through Lockdown

Wesley Shaw, the Horniman Gardens’ Head of Horticulture, was interviewed by Quetta Kaye, chair of Forest Hill Society’s Environment Committee.

QK:  Congratulations on keeping the Gardens open to the public throughout the lockdown and initiating new planting schemes.  How did you manage this?

WS: We have all been really pleased with the Gardens this year. As you say, everything looks lovely and all credit should go to the Gardens’ team who have really done a great job. When the lockdown was introduced my team were designated Key Workers to enable the Gardens to remain open and provide a place for the local community to exercise in. To safely do this we split everyone into separate teams and each team worked alternate days. Unfortunately, this meant we weren’t able to provide cover into the evening, so we temporarily reduced the closing time to 4.30pm. 

QK:  Since you became Head Gardener 7 years ago, you have altered or created new planted areas in the Gardens. Where does the inspiration come from? 

WS: My brief is to try and create displays that complement the Museum’s collections and temporary exhibitions as well as keeping all the amenity areas looking good. We try and do at least one ‘pop-up garden’ each year. The ideas usually come from myself and the team, and I then present them to the senior management team.

This gives us a great opportunity to do some interesting and innovative horticulture. Last year we used the Brick Wonders exhibition as inspiration for the summer bedding display in the Sunken Garden and created a modernist version of a bedding scheme using blocks of colour to represent Lego bricks. Visually it made a big impact and even got a full-colour spread in The Times and The Daily Telegraph.

Our last big project was to create the Grassland Garden in conjunction with the landscape designer Professor James Hitchmough and the plantsman Neil Lucas. This was intended to complement the new World Gallery that opened in the Museum in 2018. The idea was to celebrate grassland habitats and the relationship indigenous people have with them, as well as providing a beautiful long-lasting floral display that is low maintenance and great for wildlife.

QK: The newly installed bee-friendly garden at the front of the Museum is particularly apt, as is the pollution-absorbing sculpture.  Where did this idea come from and how long has it taken to create and install?

WS: The area that is now the Bee Garden has been given over to wildflowers in recent years, but we decided to step it up and create a garden dedicated to supporting bees.

The inspiration for a bee garden came after our CEO Nick Merriman declared a climate and ecological emergency. We wanted to build a garden that would really benefit wildlife, particularly bees, and to hopefully provide some inspiration to visitors about how they can create something similar in their own gardens. 

Coincidentally around that time I met local artist Dr Jasmine Pradissitto. Jasmine was really keen to exhibit some of her work in the Gardens, so I told her about our plans for a bee garden.  This worked perfectly as she has been sculpting with a material called NoxTek that removes harmful respiratory NOx pollutants from the atmosphere. NOx is thought to interfere with the ability of bees to find and pollinate flowers. It’s a great example of how public art can not only drive awareness but also create a beneficial intervention which is fitting for the ‘Culture Declares’ mission statement of increased sustainability and protection for the environment and the biodiverse creatures that need it to survive.

The garden is really quite simple: we have a series of hexagonal raised beds planted full of bee-loving plants, surrounded by meadow turf and two rather marvellous bee hotels created by my team. Jasmine’s sculpture takes centre stage in the raised beds as a focal point for the whole display.

Lockdown made it a bit tricky getting materials and plants, but we managed to get everything we needed and by mid-May we were finished and Flower Girl was installed. It looks great and, more importantly, it is absolutely crawling with bees! If you haven’t seen it, you really need to!

QK:  Did you come to the Horniman Gardens with preconceived ideas of what you would like to do, or have ideas evolved around the landscape and the educational aspects involved?

WS: A bit of both really.  I started shortly after the Heritage Lottery-funded redevelopment was finished in 2012. There were a few areas that hadn’t been completely finished and other areas that still needed improving, so over the last seven years we have been working our way through these, as well as trying to create pop-up gardens at the same time. But there’s always something that needs improving or changing, which is a good thing because it means the Garden continues to evolve and improve.

QK: Without revealing any secrets, is there a budget for planting in the Gardens? By which I mean, how strictly are you constrained financially in what you are able to do? 

WS: There isn’t a budget purely for planting.  I have a budget that covers all operational elements of the Gardens, and plants are included in that. We are obviously constrained by what money is available.  Our pop-up gardens are built on a relatively low budget, but the advantage I have is that I have a very skilled team, which means we can do a lot of things in-house. For example, the hexagonal timber beds used in the Bee Garden were built on-site, so this saved us a lot of money. 

For bigger projects we have an excellent fundraising team who will help us fund projects. For example, the Prehistoric Garden was partly funded by Tesco’s Bags for Life scheme.

QK:  In addition to the flower-planted areas, the Horniman Gardens is home to an enormous number of mature and some newer trees which must need regular monitoring and appropriate care.  This is a very important legacy to have inherited.  How is this managed?

WS: We really love our trees, and the Horniman has a fantastic collection, but, as you say, many of them are mature and entering the later stages of their life so we have been really proactive at planting the ‘next generation’ that will continue the Horniman tree legacy.

We try and plant trees that are quite unusual and aren’t generally seen outside a botanic garden or arboretum. It is important to provide good aftercare especially through a hot dry summer, so you will regularly see my team out with a water bowser watering all the young trees and weeding tree circles to prevent competition from weeds and grass. 

All our trees are risk-assessed every two years by an independent tree expert, who gives me a prioritised list of works for our tree surgeon contractor to carry out. This keeps them safe and healthy.

QK:  Congratulations on creating an exciting educational and pleasure garden — an inspiration to us all!

Millie Small (1946‒2020)

 By Gary Thornton

The singer Millie Small, who died aged 73 in May, may be one of the more surprising musical connections to Forest Hill. 

Born in Jamaica, the daughter of a sugar plantation manager, Millie arrived in London aged just 17, having been spotted by Chris Blackwell, the music producer and founder of Island Records. Blackwell brought Millie to Forest Hill, where she took dancing and elocution lessons, and recorded her best-known song, My Boy Lollipop, which reached No. 2 in the UK Singles Chart in 1964. 

Originally recorded by The Cadillacs in 1956, Millie’s version was arguably the first international hit with the distinctive rhythm of Jamaican ska music, influencing a generation of musicians and leading to a 1980s revival with bands such as The Selecter and Bad Manners (who had a hit with their own re-gendered version, My Girl Lollipop). 

Much less well-known is Millie’s 1970 cover version of Mayfair, written by Nick Drake but itself quite obscure, not appearing on any of the three albums released in his short lifetime. Although Drake’s typically fragile English melancholy is replaced by upbeat ska rhythms and calypso brass, the song retains its mystery and sense of detachment. In their very different ways, in Mayfair both artists were strangers in a strange land. 

Mayfair was released as a single to moderate success, but it was its remarkable B-side, Enoch Power, which still resonates today. Here, Millie is an immigrant living in Birmingham, where her brothers “work all week, to keep the British country running” and dance to reggae music at the weekend. Originally titled Enough Power, the chorus was changed in response to the Midland MP’s infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech, but this is a positive song about unity and harmony, not division: 

“One day there'll come a time

When all men will be brothers

They'll talk as well as dance

And live and love with each other”

Banned by the BBC, Millie performed the song at Wembley Stadium in 1970 as part of the landmark Caribbean Music Festival ― her performance is documented in Horace Ove’s film Reggae, where it appears alongside footage of Powell's speech.

Her second and final album was released in 1970, following which Millie withdrew from both the music world and public life, leaving a brief but important legacy to the influence of Jamaican music.

“I Am a Man”

In June this year, after the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in the American city of Minneapolis, two new artworks appeared in Forest Hill. The first, on Waldram Park Road; simply stated ‘Black Lives Matter’ ― a recognition of the difficulty Black people continue to have, even today, in being seen and treated equally.

The second artwork, created by Nathan Bowen, can be seen on Perry Vale, close to the underpass. It is a powerful image in its own right, but it is also a representation of the 1968 Memphis, Tennessee sanitation strike.

 

The Memphis sanitation strike was provoked by the death of two sanitation workers who were crushed to death in a garbage truck that malfunctioned while they sheltered from the rain. This led to strikes and marches, with the protestors taking up the placards shown in the photo, in a peaceful protest against poor working conditions and a host of other grievances.

Martin Luther King Jr was a strong supporter of the cause of the sanitation workers and led some of the marches in Memphis. It was on 3rd April 1968, in Memphis, that King gave his last speech ― “I've Been to the Mountaintop” ― and on the following day he was assassinated on the balcony of his motel room.

Bowen’s artwork reminds us of the injustice and inequality for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people, not only in 1968, but also today. "For at the heart of racism is the idea that a man is not a man, that a person is not a person. You are human beings. You are men. You deserve dignity." ― Rev James Lawson 1968.

Swifts Take Up Residence

Two years ago, the Lewisham Swifts group enlisted the help of the Forest Hill Fire Brigade to install swift nest boxes on the side of a block of flats in Wynell Road, SE23. Swifts are migratory birds and visit the UK from May to July to breed and fledge their young, before returning to Africa for the rest of the year. As swifts only nest in buildings, providing nest boxes is vital in trying to reverse their declining numbers. 

This year a local swift spotter was very excited to see two of the new nest boxes in use by swifts. It is not known whether the new residents were breeding pairs, but now that swifts have found the boxes it is highly likely they will produce new generations of swifts over the coming years. Look out for them when they return in May!

Ellie Reeves MP

Labour Member of Parliament for Lewisham West and Penge

The last few months have been the most difficult since being elected to Parliament three years ago ― the pandemic has been extremely challenging and not surprisingly I have been dealing with an unprecedented amount of casework from constituents.

I am heartened though by how the community has pulled together. Through volunteering, fundraising and many individual acts of charity, residents in Forest Hill and across the constituency have been exemplary, and I want to thank everyone for the work they have done.

I do not underestimate the challenges that people have faced, but I know that by working together we have been able to get through the lockdown. As restrictions are eased it will be by continuing to work together that we will be able to recover from this crisis. 

Although my Forest Hill office is closed and my team have been working from home in line with Government guidance, I have continued to work with the local community. I have visited the Lewisham food bank in Forest Hill, which has been getting out £10,000 worth of food each week to Lewisham residents. I sent a video message of support to Holy Trinity on their celebration of Trinity Sunday, thanking them for their work over these past months.

I have written to schools, supermarkets and care homes asking them what I can do to support them. And I have also made representations to Transport for London to carry out urgent upgrade work to the pedestrian crossings in the centre of Forest Hill, as it is almost impossible to socially distance when crossing the road there.

As we now start to see the easing of lockdown restrictions, it is important to get things right. If we are going to reopen our society and economy safely and successfully, we also need to have confidence in the Government’s advice and handling of the pandemic.

To date, guidance and communication has been confusing and many decisions have come with an unnecessary delay. In my view, the Government was too slow to implement the lockdown, too slow on testing and getting PPE to frontline workers and too slow in getting a task force of education stakeholders together to build consensus on the wider reopening of schools.

As we move to a new normal, we need to have total confidence in the Government. That means we need absolute assurances that test, track and trace is working properly, that all children will have support over the summer and can return to school in September, and that parents will be able to get back to work safely.

In the middle of lockdown, in April I was extremely proud to be appointed to the Labour Front Bench as Shadow Solicitor General. In this role, I work with the Shadow Attorney General to scrutinise the Government Law Officer’s oversight of prosecuting bodies and the legal advice they give the Government, as well as ensuring they fulfil their duty to uphold the rule of law.

For my despatch box debut at Attorney General Questions in April, I was able to participate virtually, under the Hybrid Parliament. I have been campaigning for a long time for Parliament to reform and modernise, and so I welcomed remote participation and voting.

Despite the new system working, the Government disappointingly scrapped it after just a few weeks and required all MPs to be present in Parliament, leading to a mile-long queue to vote.

In my role as Shadow Solicitor General, I obtained urgent legal advice on shutting down the virtual Parliament which found that if MPs were ‘employees’, then the Government’s decision would likely amount to discrimination on grounds of disability, age, sex and/or pregnancy under the Equality Act.

Nevertheless, the government was reluctant to back down but have since introduced limited measures for proxy voting and virtual participation. As a result, my questions from the despatch box have been both virtual and in person. I’ve been able to cover a range of issues ¬— from Dominic Cummings’ apparent breach of lockdown rules, to ensuring that domestic abuse cases are prosecuted swiftly and effectively.

As always, I can be contacted on ellie.reeves.mp@parliament.uk.

Positivity Rocks!

By Belinda Evans

There has been a fabulous project running at Brent Knoll School on Perry Rise called “Positivity Rocks”. 

Pupils at the school have been creating many different artwork projects to raise awareness of the issues of Covid-19 amongst the school community and to help the local community stay safe, keep well and support our key workers. 

As part of the curriculum, pupils have created posters to reinforce the hand-washing message and posters thanking key workers for their hard work and commitment. These posters don’t just adorn the school’s walls; they are put outside the school on the fence for the general public to take away and display them to spread these important messages to all. Quite sensibly, the posters are put outside with an explanation letting people know when they were created and the time to wait before taking them away, which again reminds us all how to keep safe. They certainly have brightened up the neighbourhood.

Then the positivity rocks appeared!

In the same vein as the posters, beautifully painted stones then appeared outside the school for people to take away. The stones were simple pebbles painted with images and patterns of the pupils’ own designs. The idea was that the stones would be picked up by locals who would be passing by, and then travel away from the school, and for the pupils to then find out just how far they had travelled. The coordinator of this project at the school said that, as part of the project, the pupils were using their geography lessons to map out where their rocks had been taken. 

People who did let the school know where the rocks ended up got a lovely response back from the school ― here’s the response I received: 

“That's absolutely amazing, thank you. This rock was painted by one of our Year 11 pupils, whose mum is a front-line worker in Lewisham Hospital. We think that her choice of rocks shows her personality.

We will share this with the children tomorrow, they will be very happy.”

We hope you agree that this project really brought the school and the local community together in a very positive way, as well as making passers-by smile and feel positive!

Sans Store

Opened in August, this new shop at 5-7 Brockley Rise (close to Stanstead Road) offers a wide range of produce including:

• Bakery items and seasonal fresh fruit and vegetables

• Hand-picked artisanal produce from across London and the UK

• Dry-store and refrigerated items, including veggie, vegan, free-from and organic ranges

• Greeting cards and flowers

Pop in or visit them at https://www.sansstore.co.uk.

From Our Foreign Correspondent on Lockdown … Blythe Hill Fields

Opportunities for far-flung exploration have been curtailed during the coronavirus lockdown and you probably don’t want to read about a three-mile walk to Waitrose in Beckenham. So I will focus on a destination that is only partly foreign: Blythe Hill Fields, which straddles the border of SE23 and SE6.

Firstly, as anyone familiar with the topography of SE23 knows, the word ‘hill’ in a local place name indicates a substantial incline not suited to a gentle stroll. Blythe Hill Fields is no exception. Sitting on the summit of Blythe Hill, the park is reached by a determined walk up one of the many surrounding access roads. However, it is less strenuous than walking up to Horniman Gardens and the views are just as good, if not better.

Blythe Hill Fields has panoramic views of central London to the north, from Canary Wharf to the Shard and the City of London. To the south are glimpses of a far-reaching treescape, hinting at what the Great North Wood might have looked like.

The park has a lovely mood on summer evenings. The light from the setting sun casts a warm glow over the city skyline — a warmth that extends over the park itself, creating a magical atmosphere over the small clusters of park visitors. The midsummer magic wasn’t confined to this correspondent, as a member of a group of youngsters doing cartwheels was overheard to exclaim “We came here to drink and ended up doing gymnastics!”.

A visit to Blythe Hill Fields is further rewarded by including  a walk up or down nearby Lowther Hill (warning: steep hill alert). Looking west to the Sydenham Hill Ridge reveals a wonderful view of Forest Hill and the top of Horniman Museum’s clock tower nestled among the trees.

https://www.blythehillfields.org.uk