Garden Art

You may or may not have noticed the lovely row of paintings on the left-hand side fence as you enter Loftus from Telford street. These were done in the early stages of the development by a group of art students from college Gwent after doing a project on the storey of Ruby Loftus. They came along to Loftus for inspiration and this wonderful mural was the result.

These paintings were well viewed when the builder’s yard and offices were next door but since the yard is no more these fabulous works of art have been forgotten about and probably not even noticed at all by residents who come in from other entrances. Pobl have decided they are wasted where they are and should be moved.

Paul and Bradley carefully took each one down and varnished them to preserve the paint. They have now been relocated to a new home in the kitchen garden where they can be better appreciated.

A second group of art students came along the following year for a new project, but this time the theme was sustainability and the ecology of Loftus. I spent the afternoon with them talking about biodiversity and the different habitats we have created at Loftus and they went away inspired.        They returned a month or so later for a photo shoot with their paintings which were then put up on the fence inside the builder’s yard. Unfortunately, we don’t know what happened to them after that.

I’ve always thought of gardening as art as it encourages creativeness. A garden, to me, is like a 3D canvass which is never finished and it’s the inner artist within us all that makes us love pottering around with plants. From choosing shapes and colours, to arranging plants nicely together, it’s all about aesthetics. Even in the veg plot it is not always just about food for the table, I see art in our kitchen garden everywhere I look. Perfectly spaced rows of carrots, arty combinations of veg, some climbing up frames, some growing flat, some big, some small and some topped off with accessories like colourful windmills. Even though the initial thought in a kitchen garden is to grow edible plants, I think the sub conscious artist inside makes the majority of us want our veg to look nice in the process. There are of course a few exceptions and I need to remind a few that weeds are not a pretty sight.