Every year gardeners, garden designers, craftspeople and artists work like busy bees to create eye-catching scenes for The Chelsea Flower Show in London. When that show ends after five days, most of the exhibits are dismantled and lost forever - preserved only in photographs and film.
However, this year there was a huge effort to preserve one of the most successful garden features - a recumbent representation of the Greek earth goddess Gaia. Her upper body was carved from sequoia wood. Serendipitously, the wood carver responsible was a fellow called Chris Wood!
And here's the good part. Gaia was brought to Sheffield and supplanted in the green communal area behind Park Hill Flats where our daughter Frances works.
I had been meaning to pay the sculpture a visit with my camera and today was the day. She looked so beautiful lying there - her head as big as a small family car. The wood carving was exquisite. Her lower body is made from limestone using traditional stone-walling techniques.In coming months, the surrounding grassy banks and borders will evolve into a properly planted garden area for community use.
Cynic that I am, I can't help thinking that in the course of time brainless vandals will probably target Gaia - after all she is made of wood and as I say - quite beautiful. But for now she's perfect - contrasting nicely with the brutalism of the flats.
After my visit, I walked all the way home again - some four miles, stopping a couple of times to read the first chapters of "All Together Now?" by Mike Carter - "One man's walk in search of his father and a lost England". I am enjoying it so far. Very different from "Island Dreams" by Evelyn Orange - that's for sure!
The green plastic fencing is temporary to protect grass re-seeding
“Now we, if not in the spirit, have been caught up to see our earth, our mother, Gaia Mater, set like a jewel in space. We have no excuse now for supposing her riches inexhaustible nor the area we have to live on limitless because
unbounded. We are the children of that great blue white jewel. Through
our mother we are part of the solar system and part through that of
the whole universe. In the blazing poetry of the fact we are children of the stars.”
- William Golding -
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