: General

Produce and flower gardens were a mainstay of Miner's homes. An important place where food was grown, where pidgeons, chickens and often a pig was also kept. Sharon Ford is Learning and Participation Manager at Big Pit National Coal Museum. She wrote this article for our blog, in celebration of the health and wellbeing benefits of gardening - particularly during this lockdown. Its full of gardening joy and helpful hints and tips, and Sharon had more than a little help from a fellow keen gardener - her son, Iwan.

‘We may think we are nurturing our garden, but of course it's our garden that is really nurturing us’   

Jenny Uglow

I’ve never been so grateful to have a garden as I do at the moment, because it offers a space to inhabit beyond the four walls of the house. The fact that the weather has been so consistently good has enabled us to make the most of being outdoors when not working, to get out of each other’s way when we need a bit of solitary time, and of course catch up on all the garden tasks which are usually shoe horned into evenings and weekends. Having something to plan and focus on has been really helpful in taking our minds away from the current global crisis and the fact that we are away from friends and family. Even our energetic 8 year old son Iwan has been more engaged with the outdoors so far this year, planning which vegetables he wants to harvest and eat in a few months time, and the fresh air and activity tires him out at the end of the day. This is important as he is missing his usual swimming, gymnastics and rugby sessions.

The benefits of gardening on physical and mental health are well-researched and widely known, and it can help with a range of physical conditions such as high blood pressure and anxiety, as well as helping those with more defined mental health problems.

Not everyone is as lucky as we are to have a garden at home and an allotment just across the road, but keeping pots or planters of vegetables in small spaces can also help reduce stress and boost self-esteem. Tending for house plants has also been proven to give a sense of purpose, and can be a good place to start for those with no previous experience of gardening.

Anyway, I asked Iwan of he wanted to share his top tips for growing and tending, as he’s a seasoned gardener with four years experience now. He also wanted to share his tips for keeping chickens, just in case anyone is thinking of getting chickens to keep them happy! By the way, the therapeutic benefits of chicken keeping are also well documented!

My name is Iwan Ford. I am 8 years old and live in Blaenavon. During the lockdown, I spend all my time at home with Mam and Dad. It is ok but I miss my friends and cousins. We are very lucky because we have two gardens and two chickens. My chickens are called Barbara and Millie. I had another chicken who was called Penny, but she died a few weeks ago because she was poorly. We buried her in the garden.

Someone gave Millie to us when they heard Barbara was on her own. She is a Silkie, and is very funny and clumsy. She has big feet and walks on and into everything. Sometimes she kicks the food over and sometimes she walks over Barbara. She is very friendly and follows me around the garden. Silkies have blue ears and furry feathers. Barbara is a small bantam and has very beautiful feathers. She had orange feathers around her neck. She lays very small eggs but they are yummy and have very yellow yolks. You can tell they are happy chickens.

I do some gardening to help Mam and Dad because we have an allotment as well as our house garden. I like planting, watering and picking the vegetables and fruit when they grow. I have my own vegetable patch and have planted my French beans, pumpkin, marrow and kidney bean seeds already. Seeds need good soil with compost mixed in, sunshine and water. You have to remember to water a lot or they will not grow.

Iwan’s Top Tips:

Planting tips:

• Fill the plant pots with compost. Put your seed in. Sometimes you half fill the pot with compost then the seed then more compost. Sometimes you fill the pot then make a hole with your finger and put the seed in. Make sure you water them, and they will grow in a few weeks. When they have grown big enough and no more frost is coming, you put the plants out into the ground.
• If you haven’t got a garden you can grow potatoes in buckets or bags of compost if you cut the top. Tomatoes will grow like this as well.
• Always write the names of what you are planting on tags or lolly sticks and put into the pots so you know which is which.

Chicken tips:

• Silkie chickens don’t like to wander as they can’t fly, so if you only have a small garden silkies are the best.
• Chicken poos are good for making compost. When this is ready you can dig it into the soil to make your plants come up big and strong.
• Chickens love meal worms as a little treat. We give some to the chickens and put some out for the garden birds as well. ‘Beaky and Feather’ is the chickens favourite food and makes their feathers shine.

While The National Waterfront Museum’s GRAFT team and volunteers cannot gather to garden the Museum’s courtyard garden at this time, they are nonetheless keeping busy setting up ‘Seeds Out in the Community’ and encouraging us all to grow sunflowers in visible and public spaces to show support for key workers. Here’s a little more about this innovative community project and how it’s grown from a seed of an idea to a flourishing project that grows plants, food and people.

GRAFT: a soil based syllabus is the National Waterfront Museum's edible land and educational project, and a permanent piece of green infrastructure within Swansea City Centre. The project is also a socially engaged work of art by artist Owen Griffiths, and was originally commissioned as part of Now the Hero / Nawr Yr Arwr in 2018 funded by 1418NOW as part of a huge UK wide cultural project commemorating the first World War.

GRAFT works with community groups from a wide range of backgrounds across the city who came together, to transform the Museum's once industrial courtyard into a beautiful, sustainable, organic growing environment; creating an edible landscape to encourage participation and conversation around land use, food and sustainability in an accessible and empowering way.

Owen and Senior Learning Officer Zoe Gealy develop the ongoing program at GRAFT around these ideas of collaboration, sustainability and community. Every Friday, (other than during this lockdown), volunteers young and old work alongside one another to share skills working in wood and metal, learning how to grow plants, gaining qualifications and supporting each other along the way. The project has seen successful apprenticeships develop as a result of its program as well as seeing the long-term mental health benefits of working outside together. New friendships are formed, and people, as well as plants, flourish. During GRAFT’s development, in addition to raised beds, a pergola and benches from local timber, a cob pizza oven and beehives have been introduced to the garden. GRAFT's youngest volunteers come from Cefn Saeson School in Neath and work with Alyson Williams, the resident Beekeeper, learning about biodiversity, the environment and working together to care for the bees.

Some of the produce grown in the garden usually makes its way into delicious meals at the Museum's café whilst some is used for community meals at GRAFT. A portion of produce is used by volunteers, and some is donated to projects and groups throughout the area who provide food for those in need, such as Matts House, Ogof Adullam and the Swansea refugee drop in centre.

SPREADING SEEDS AND SUNSHINE DURING LOCKDOWN

Over the coming weeks GRAFT will be posting seeds through City and County of Swansea’s food parcel scheme and to community groups they regularly work with such as Roots Foundation and CRISIS. The seeds include squash and sunflowers, which were harvested by the gardeners last season.

Another initiative GRAFT is developing in the coming weeks is encouraging people to plant sunflowers in visible and public spaces, to show support for key workers alongside rainbow paintings. People are also invited to post pictures of their successful growing on GRAFT’s social media pages.

To request seeds contact zoe.gealy@museumwales.ac.uk

07810 657170

During lock-down, the GRAFT garden continues to need some tending and so  The National Waterfront Museum's on-site team are watering the GRAFT garden and seedlings during their daily shifts.

With thanks to players of the People’s Postcode Lottery for supporting Amgueddfa Cymru’s public programme of activities and events.

FOLLOW GRAFT:

www.facebook.com/graft.a.soil.based.syllabus

INSTAGRAM: Graft____

We may be in lockdown, but nature continues to thrive, plants continue to need tending and borders weeding. Just as the nation is tending to its gardens, so are the Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales Historic Gardens Unit team, albeit at a reduced working schedule. Here, Juliet Hodgkiss who maintains St Fagans’ beautiful and varied gardens shares a little about what’s going on there.

To keep safe and maintain distance during the pandemic, each of our team are working one day a week to do essential gardening.  With only one gardener in at any one time we are in total isolation, keeping both ourselves and others safe.  One of the most important jobs we have to do is the planting and maintenance of our collection of heritage potato varieties. These potatoes were donated to the Museum over twenty years ago by the Scottish Agricultural Science Agency. As a living object, these potatoes must be grown every year to produce seed potato for the following year. Our collection includes the Lumper, the potato grown at the time of the Irish potato famine, which we grow in Nant Wallter and Rhyd-y-car gardens. We also grow Yam, Myatt’s Ashleaf, Skerry Blue and Fortyfold, all varieties from the 18th and 19th century.

This winter we had a great time planting many new trees in the Gardens, to replace lost trees, add new interest for the visitors and for attracting wildlife. We’ve added four new mulberry trees to the Mulberry Lawn, several species of hawthorn, rowan trees and Berberis shrubs to the terrace banks, three whitebeam, a katsura tree, a snakebark maple and a snowy mespilus by the ponds, crab apples to the Castle Orchard and a variety of native species for future coppicing. While we’re enjoying the warm, dry spring, it does mean that all these new trees need a lot of watering to keep them alive. Many are planted a long distance from the nearest tap, so have to be watered with watering cans.

We are also keeping the plants in our greenhouses and nursery alive. We have many plants which are either rare or unique to St Fagans.  These include two offspring of our fern-leaved beech and seedlings from a pine which was lost in a storm a few years ago. These require daily watering this time of year. Spring is the time of year we replant our beds and borders, filling the gaps left by plants lost over winter. We didn’t get around to planting all the plants we ordered over the winter months before the lockdown, so we’re keeping these plants alive while trying to get as many as possible in the ground, with our greatly reduced staff.

Stuck at home? Lots of us at the Museum are too, but although we may have temporarily shut our doors to visitors during the Covid-19 outbreak, we still have lots of fantastic goodies for you to savour from the comfort of your own home.

So, how are you feeling?

Feeling confined? Spare a thought for Tim Peake who was hauled up in the tiny Soyuz TMA-19M capsule with two of his crewmates Yuri Malenchenko and Tim Kopra as he descended back to Earth from the International Space Station back in 2015. Although the journey was just under three and a half hours, this little confined capsule saved his life. Remember: staying in your house right now can save lives too.

Feeling peckish? With Easter just around the corner, how about this 100-year-old Easter egg? Not your thing? How about this compilation of traditional Welsh recipes. I'll give the Oatmeal Gruel a miss, Eldeberry Wine however... now you're talking!

Feeling curious? Ever wondered why Jones is such a popular Welsh surname? Check it out now, in a minute.

Feeling arty? Why not try your hand at some botanical illustration.

Feeling adventurous? Take a trip underground at Big Pit National Coal Museum and experience life as a real miner.

Feeling nostalgic? Take this opportunity to snoop around some of the houses at St Fagans National Museum of History whilst no one’s watching!

Feeling crafty? Print out and make this paper calculator.

Feeling blue*? Mix things up with some natural colour inspiration from our mineral and crystal collection.

Feeling fabulous? Check out this spectacular, and very old, Bronze Age gold bling; some perfect pieces to compliment your work-from-home attire.

Feeling stiff from sitting at your home desk? Time to take a break and follow these simple stretching exercises. Plus, here are some tips on sitting correctly in front of your computer to prevent aches and pains.

Feeling active? How many times can you run up and down the stairs before your kettle boils? One, two, three, go!...

Feeling poorly? Then all of us here at the Museum wish you a hastly and speedy recovery. Get well soon! x

Not sure how you feel? Then we have over half a million other possibilities to whet your interest, fire your imagination and scratch that curiosity itch... go have a rummage!

* The meaning of this phrase may come from old deepwater sailing ships: if a captain or officers died at sea then a blue flag was flown, or a blue strip painted on the hull of the ship when returning to port. Find out more about the psychology of colour.

We invited some Big Pit Miner guides - Barry Stevenson, Richard Phillips and Len Howells - to share their memories of working underground.

These films include photos from the Cornwell Collection, and were originally made for the 'Bernd and Hilla Becher: Industrial Visions' exhibition, along with this guide to the workings of the headgear: