As members of the Alive Lawrence Weston Community Gardening Group can’t meet up together in person at the moment, we have launched a teleconference group to connect them for a garden-themed group call.
For the past few years, the group had run in Blaise Weston Court, meeting weekly for accessible gardening and socialising. Since we can’t see each other at the moment, members were offered a group chat in addition to their weekly befriending calls from the facilitator and everyone jumped at the chance. “It would be revitalising,” said one member of the group, while another commented that “It would make me feel less cut off.”
We began on Monday 8th Feb for an RSPB Birdwatch themed chat. After catching up as a group for the first time in nearly a year, we discussed the birds we had seen whilst doing the birdwatch from our windows over the previous weekend. One group member then offered to read some poems about birds he had written, and a group decision to talk about spring next time was agreed upon.
This Monday (15th Feb), we talked about spring flowers and what we could start growing on our windowsills ready for when we can meet as a group again, as “It’s nice to look ahead”. We did a spring flowers quiz and planned next week to share recipes with fruit and veg we can grow ourselves to inspire each other to eat more healthily and adventurously! One member said, “It’s lovely to hear all your voices here talking with me”, and another “It is good to keep in touch.”
We will read poems, share sightings of plants seen on walks and tips for growing our own, and most importantly, share these ideas as a group weekly until we can meet in person again.
With what we learn from this group call, Alive will be developing a garden-themed teleconference chat room that will be open to the public to help connect people through nature.
We hope to reintroduce our face-to-face sessions as soon as COVID-19 government guidelines allow and are working hard on making these safe.
If you would like to register interest for when this does open up you can contact Alive on 0117 377 4756 or info@activities.org.