Meadow Arts is working with National Trust Herefordshire during the summer of 2024 to deliver a programme of artistic activities at The Weir Garden, exploring how visitors can creatively engage with the landscape. 

We were thrilled to kick off the project with an inspiring session led by practitioners Emma Beynon and Emily Hedges. They invited a group from Herefordshire Mind to explore the gardens and their connection with nature.

The day began with a poetry walk through the garden, guided by Emma. This was followed by a convivial picnic lunch in the walled garden. In the afternoon, Emily led a ceramics workshop where participants consolidated their writing work, pressing lines from their poems into clay labels they made in a temporary workshop set up in the greenhouse.

Emma and Emily thrive on collaborative projects like this, designing and delivering workshops centred around the participants, fostering creativity and well-being.

Emily explains: 

“It’s all about understanding the needs of our participants and answering them; enabling them to be creative. We’re thorough in planning our workshops and create a comfortable environment in which people can work ahead of time, but on the day it’s a co-production. How the participants react to what we have planned is what’s important.

I wanted to work with the idea of plant labels as there are several in the gardens identifying significant trees, and they are widely used in the walled garden marking rows of vegetables and flowers. I felt that pressing their written words into handmade clay labels would enhance the experience the participants had had writing with Emma.

The Weir is a fabulous location for working with groups. It has areas of wilderness, winding paths through a plant hunter’s paradise, a walled garden with open views to the river and a terrific greenhouse, where I set up a ceramics workshop. It’s not every day you have the chance to make work in such a beautiful place.”

Emma agrees, it was a great day:

“I have had considerable experience of writing with participants in the landscape, but working with Emily deepens their engagement. The act of transferring their words onto a physical artefact gives participants the time and space to connect with their response to the environment and celebrate their pleasure in the place. 

On the poetry walk, I invited them to freewrite in response to everything they noticed while exploring the garden, their writing was descriptive and detailed. We listened to each other read poetry by John Clare and shared our own writing. Then we wrote a group poem, where each person contributed a descriptive line to create a piece that helped us see the garden through the eyes of our fellow writers.”: 

The distant hustling moan of sharp annoying traffic.

From the hut, a portal into another world. 

The freedom of a sweeping willow, 

a chandelier of nature. 

The wild daisies talking to each other,

the dandelions talking back. 

Tripping along the path to see the river,

the light is more dappled now. 

The trumpeting leaves, the dancing daisies and tickle of grass flowers.

Surround sound of the tiny wren repeating our words. 

Fairy garden listen to the wind in the leaves,

Finding tiny streams. 

Caterpillar munched leaves of broad rhubarb like plants,

below the chattering Robin and the calling cuckoo. 

Bed planting as pretty as a salad bowl,

these herbaceous borders have foundations not roots. 

Breathe deep. Stay still. Look up at the sky.

Never stop breathing. Never stop.

– Written by participants from Hereford Mind, The Weir Garden 6th June 2024.

You can also listen to the poem below:

We’ve been thrilled with the feedback we’ve had from the group from Mind, who were very responsive. One of them said how much she enjoyed appreciating the sun through the leaves of the tree and being given time to think about it in more detail, another said how much she enjoyed clay making in the Victorian Greenhouse nourished by vines and peaches.”

“It was wonderful to see such creativity taking place at The Weir Garden. The poetry and clay-making workshops seemed to really connect with everyone taking part, as did the surrounding gardens and glasshouse, and I think Emma and Emily did a great job of encouraging and inspiring creativity within the group. The Weir Garden is such a special place, and it was really pleasing to see people engaging with their surroundings and sharing their appreciation for nature.

Fran Hawkeswood, Programming and Partnerships Officer – Herefordshire National Trust

The People, Proposition, Landscape project will continue throughout the summer, culminating in a final public showcase at The Weir Garden in September 2024.

The project is generously funded thanks to support from the UK Government Shared Prosperity Fund. It will provide £2.6 billion of funding for local investment by March 2025. The Fund aims to improve pride in place and increase life chances across the UK by investing in communities and places and supporting local businesses, people, and skills. For more information, visit the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.