YORKSHIRE GARDENS TRUST

Garden Visits for Refugees

Over the last few years, the Yorkshire Gardens Trust (YGT) has organised garden visits for refugees, with our members acting as hosts and informal guides. We have been delighted to have support from garden owners for this venture, including the National Trust, the Historic Houses Association, English Heritage and the Royal Horticultural Society.

In 2005, working with Refugee Action in Leeds, we took a group of Iraqis and Iranians to Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal. In 2006 and 2007, in cooperation with the Persian Association of Leeds, visits were arranged to Newby Hall and Brodsworth House and gardens. This year in May we accompanied a small group of refugees from Leeds around Brunswick Organic Nursery and Bishopthorpe Walled Gardens, near York. These refugees will be involved in an allotment project, instigated by the Refugee Council in Leeds. The visits have been so successful that the group from the Refugee Council had another day with us in September when we visited RHS Harlow Carr. Here we had the added delight of two toddlers trying to hide amongst the bushes whilst adults earnestly discussed the merits of vegetable and herb growing.

Like all county gardens trusts, the YGT aims to improve the awareness and appreciation of the value of parks and gardens as part of our local and national inheritance. However, visiting gardens is still, for the most part, something of a ‘socially exclusive’ activity, so

these visits are intended in part to bring an element of ‘social inclusion’ into our activities. A garden encapsulates something of our society’s past and present, our values and mores, our aspirations; and visiting gardens is a major national activity.

But ‘social inclusion’ is something of a fashionable notion, and the rewards a garden can bring go far beyond government policies and ticking boxes. Recently settled refugees will mostly live in an urban environment, physically cut off from, possibly unaware of, and often unable to access, the greener surroundings of parks, gardens, and the countryside. At the simplest level, what they appreciate is an enjoyable walk, in beautiful surroundings, in the company of local people who want to share their passion about gardens. And the added bonus is that our members also find these visits invaluable, seeing familiar scenes through different eyes. We have found that gardens, growing plants and enjoying the landscape is a common link and inheritance for us all. We hope to continue to share our rich park and garden heritage with refugees next year.

November 2008