Last week we visited The Serge Hill Project with some residents from New Hope House to do some light gardening in their beautiful “plant library” garden.
We are fortunate to have formed a partnership with The Serge Hill Project and charity HACRO (Hertfordshire Association for the Care and Rehabilitation of Offenders), enabling us to bring people for a session each month to garden and enjoy other nature-based activities and workshops in the Apple House and the perennial garden in which it is immersed.
While there, Becky Fincham, Director of Programmes, and our host, pointed out a stunning bright flower – the Echinacea 'Fatal Attraction' (pictured, above) - which stood out amidst a spray of smaller flowers. It was oval-shaped in its centre, larger and more vibrant. We all admired it. It was an example of fasciation, unusual growth that can be caused by environmental stress or damage to the meristem. Genetic factors can also play a part in how it forms.
Plants that display this fascinating growth pattern are often prized by horticulturists and become rare “cultivars” – meaning that they are valued because of their distinctive, unique and extraordinary character.
As we appreciated this example of fasciation in the paradise of the Serge Hill Project's Plant Library, I imagined a society which saw and truly valued the qualities of people who are experiencing homelessness and substance dependence; how people have found creative and genius ways to survive and grow through often highly traumatising experiences.
In such a society there would be no stigma or judgement. Instead, admiration, the wish to learn from and prize such creative resilience, leading to new forms and ways of expressing, as well as social and organisational changes which remove barriers and celebrate those who bring forth these qualities and insights.
One of the main values of New Hope is that we recognise the strength inherent in each individual and help mirror this back to people who are, through repeated difficult experiences, often resistant to seeing this truth about themselves.
It seems to me that this is one of the most helpful ways not only to help people to grow in new ways, but to mirror back how they are already extraordinary in how they have arrived at this present moment.
Keep growing! – Ian