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In an exciting new series of collaborative articles, the team behind the hugely successful BloomFringe share their thoughts on how horticulture, art and community can come together to bring sustainable and positive change to our lives
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he BloomFringe focus has been across the city of Dublin, in public spaces, in community gardens, at ambiguous forgotten junctions and places we particularly love - what we term impoverished corners of our city. Our bi-line is ‘making the gritty city pretty’. BloomFringe hosts talks and tours and curates a series of temporary pop-up gardens and events. We link communities together and foster collaborative projects, which make long term connections and help to change people’s perceptions and experience of the city. BloomFringe is echoing a global urban greening zeitgeist. Inspirations like pocket parks in 1970s New York, Danish urban playgrounds of the 1960s, community gardens in Berlin and Havana, beehives on Paris rooftops, flower-filled verges and roundabouts in Sheffield, have for us formed a green map of nature across the world’s cities. As urban populations grow, humans are calmer and happier if they have a green space to retreat to, even if it’s only for a sandwich at lunchtime. It really is a case of putting the jungle back into the Urban Jungle. Prompted by the plight of the honeybee and other serious global environmental concerns, the BloomFringe mission has evolved over the past four years forming our core principals now of making cities more livable through greening projects that bring neighbourhoods, communities and people together. We have connected too with others making similar changes in their own cities right across the world. They have spoken at our conferences, spreading the story of the effect urban greening projects have had internationally. It
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was very powerful for a community gardener in our north inner city to meet the Gangsta Gardener Ron Finley from LA last year and to make genuine friends and share stories, seeds and growing tips together. Practitioners of the power of gardening to ease mental health issues were thrilled to meet Sara Venn of Edible Bristol this year to hear about how her greening project in the Bear Pit drew out the anti-social behaviour that dominated their city centre public space for decades. In Dublin Castle this year Ulla Maria Aude’s presentation of Aarhus city’s Green Embassy and Green Wedge projects gave Dublin’s decision-makers an excellent view of a potential urban greening templates. All of this BloomFringe energy coupled with a city council who is adopting forward thinking planting schemes for our urban public spaces and more innovative use of the public realm makes for a dynamic combination. Other public and business support mechanisms enable the Festival and our other periphery events throughout the year. This all builds a great community between ourselves and the other stakeholders and supporters at the same time as facilitating us to make connections to people in our city through greening projects. It’s pretty cool stuff! We have ideas and inspirations coming out of our ears and we have only scratched the surface so far. Watch this space to see what we get up to and who we’re bringing to town next to tell us their tales of more international urban greening. BloomFringe uses the power of art and creative projects as a tool to engage different communities in the Urban Greening conversation. We have worked with artists and craftspeople to make street art, children’s workshops and interventions, sculpture installations and design prototypes. Using simple ideas that are fun, brings people together and creates a friendly, accessible atmosphere where conversations can develop easily.
HORTICULTURECONNECTED / www.horticulture.ie / Winter 2017
