Weeding the Web

Joe Swift and Zandra Rhodes' Pocket Park makes a landmark of the Greenwood Theatre, London SE1

Zandra Rhodes and Joe Swift add colour to their handiwork

The Greenwood Theatre has taken on a new presence, thanks to the latest Pocket Park in Weston Street, London SE1. First-time visitors no longer walk past and have to retrace their steps to find what was a dull brown building with no distinguishing features.

The Pocket Park, wrapped around two sides of the theatre - which is used for lectures for King's College, London students during the day and for performances at night - replaces drab strips of tarmac and is the result of  a design collaboration between fashion guru Dame Zandra Rhodes and garden designer Joe Swift.

Rhodes' influence hits you in the eye. Renowned for her colourful clothes and hair, she chose the pink, yellowy-orange and blue for the walls. She painted Swift into a corner, so to speak, on planting. "I've often painted walls," he said. "It's an economical way of changing mood and feel in a garden, but here would probably just have painted it magnolia. The colour completely influenced the plant choices."

This was a grim tarmac pavement used as an occasional car park

To match Rhodes' vivid colours, he's chosen strongly coloured and architectural plants. Currently, red-and-yellow tulips fill the beds, magenta still shows on fleshy bergenias, and perennial wallflowers have just begun blooming in their strong mauve.

Scent will also be important, especially in winter when powerful colour will be replaced by powerful scents like jasmine. "I had a lot of scope to get in a lot of interest throughout the year," said Swift. "The idea is to be a full experience. The most important thing is it's outward-looking, increasing people's engagement with horticulture. In London, there's so much opportunity to get green space into works but you want quality horticulture where people can see someone's designed some plants and put plants together quite interestingly."

Balancing the powerful scents and colours, Swift produced what he describes as a "very neutral layout". The raised beds are rendered in pale grey, topped with a matching steel angle. Not only offering a foil to the bright tones, this allows planting right up to the edge of the beds and positively discourages anyone from sitting anywhere but on the wooden seats incorporated in the recesses that punctuate the planting.

Workmen enjoy the new area

Swift gave height, not only with unusual shrubs such as pomegranite, but by adding steel frames that arch over the beds, connecting the garden to the building and creating shadows and a strong profile in keeping with the architecture.  It's a design that will continue to develop as climbers clothe the walls and make it, as Swift says, "quite jungly".

The Pocket Park proffered a new experience for Swift, who hasn't collaborated with anyone before on a design and who avers that he "doesn't do committees". Committees remained off the agenda but he would certainly consider collaboration again. "It's important to know which bit you're doing and which roles. And for people to let me do what I want within what I feel confident with. I really enjoyed it," he said.

Joe Swift goes for a quick walk to check his planting's progress

The project was the brainchild of Cityscapes, a not-for-profit limited company that aims to inject a cross-disciplinary approach into design. What with Richard Roger's colour-coded design for the Cancer Care Centre opening at Guy's Hospital in 2016, just down the road from the theatre, and the orangey and pink Fashion and Textile Museum (founded by Rhodes), in nearby Bermondsey Street, this area is fast becoming the Colour Quarter and it's no wonder that Rhodes was considered a perfect choice for the collaboration.

Colour, texture and scent are all vital components

The park sits along what will be an important approach to the new London Bridge Station and transforms the junction of Weston Street and Snowsfields, helping to make a connection across the SE1 area from the station to Bermondsey to the east. Joint funding from Network Rail, King's College, London (on whose land it sits), the Mayor of London's Pocket Parks Programme and Team London Bridge (the local Business Improvement District) furnished the £260,000 cost. Team London Bridge continues to support the teams who maintain the beds from Putting Down Roots, a horticultural training programme run by nearby St Mungo's, a charity for the homeless and those at risk.

 

Entrance to the Greenwood Theatre in Weston Street, London SE1

Greenwood Theatre Manager, Catherine Sharman loves the new exterior. The garden has gradually become part of the community since the walls were finished last November. Children from the neighbouring Snowsfield Primary School planted the tulip bulbs that are now so colourful and workmen are taking the opportunity for a sit-down in the their tea breaks. Students, after recent revision classes, flooded out to sit and enjoy the good weather. "Often," says Sharman ruefully, "I can't get a seat myself!"

Colouring books for (grown-up) gardeners

A page from Glorious Gardens, published by Michael O'Mara Books.

Bank Holiday Monday turned out surprisingly restful. And I'm embarrassed to admit why, but, yes, it involved watercolours and a colouring book. I'm now one of the thousands of adults who are colouring things in.

I wasn't just colouring in (she says, defensively). I had a new Leonard Cohen LP (new, as in bought from a retro record shop) on the turntable. So, sitting in a room, listening to Songs from a Room, making room for colour.

There are theories popping up like mushrooms as to why colouring books are so of the moment, the main one being that they're destressing. The Washington Post mentions "digital detox". Some books, such as Colour Yourself Calm  are being sold specifically as therapy. Comments on the Independent website ask, "Why can't it just be because it's fun?" after journalist Nash Riggins describes it as "a depressing insight into the terrifying times in which we’re living".

Well, I guess it's all those things. Monday afternoon I was nowhere but in front of that book, listening to that music. All thoughts of where I should be and what I should be doing vanished. However, it's also something else. And there's relevance to gardening, not just because Johanna Basford's The Enchanted Garden is one of the best-sellers and the two books I'm enjoying, published by Michael O'Mara, are Glorious Gardens and Fabulous Flowers. 

Page from Fabulous Flowers, published Michael O'Mara. (Unfinished, in case you're wondering.)

For anyone with a creative urge to paint but without the training, aptitude or time to produce anything that would make it even close to being clamped to the fridge door, they let you concentrate on just one element: colour.

And what I like about these two books is, not just that they offer patterns, rather than actual scenes, but that the flowers aren't, for the most part, particularly recognisable. A rule-follower as a child, I always found it weird that others might colour the sky red and, even now, confronted with, say, a sunflower, I automatically find myself reaching for yellow (or red, at a push). Though, getting on top of the idea that one can dream, I can say my horizons are widening.

I'm using watercolour pencils (interesting in that they act as both crayons and paints). Frustrated by the limited number of colours, I also dug out my old watercolour paintbox from childhood. Thinking about what colours to use where as I fill in petals, buds and leaves, what tones to use, and creating different shades, experimenting with juxtapositions, using the "wrong" combinations - it's a calming, restful way to get to know how colours work. All grist to the mill for thinking about flower beds.

Perspective and texture are important, of course, but juggling all three can feel defeating. Focusing on just one element is helping me to explore and crystallise ideas on just that one area.

Oddly, I don't remember enjoying colouring as a child. Lots of things got in the way, and not just the rule-following. Pictures were usually pretty dull, I remember, requiring the use of one colour (those self-imposed rules!) on rather large areas. My mother also showed me pictures completed by my great aunt in one of her own childhood books (there, adult colouring, not so new!) and I could never get mine to look that good.

 

Great-Aunt Helen Innes's delicate colouring

Oh, dear. My not-so-delicate approach!

Children generally don't, I think, have motor skills developed enough to produce really good colouring. Well, I didn't - bits would escape the lines, the colours themselves would be uneven. Even felt tips take a bit of handling to ensure that you don't get heavy overlines in one part and tiny white patches of missed paper in others. Developing your skills isn't something you tend to recognise as a kid, so you just think you're rubbish at it.

I can't (and nor can you, looking at the picture at the top) say that I'm much better at the actually colouring now, but crucially, I don't care. It's meditative, relaxing, inspirational and subtly, unimposingly, instructive. 

Of Glorious Gardens and Fabulous Flowers, the second will, I think, appeal to those who'd like a slightly more abstract approach and a daintier feel. It also includes the interesting variation of pages with black backgrounds. Glorious Gardens tends to larger, less delicate images. And, if you're still feeling guilty at the potential waste of time, you can cut them up later to make gift tags, cards and wrapping paper.

With over 200 pages waiting for attention between these two books, I may even need a new box of paints!