Have your say on the new ­Gateway Garden

Thursday, 29 January 2009

Jane Honey

RESIDENTS in the Okehampton area are being invited to get involved in an exciting project to create a new feature on one of the main routes into the town.
The Gateway Garden is a three-month long project to create a community area in a central location of Okehampton, providing a place for rest and reflection.
Volunteers with the ‘Growing Our Future’ project recently donned boots and picked up shovels and shears to clear a patch of overgrown land at the corner of Crediton Road, Northfield Road and East Street.
Now the public is being invited to submit designs, ideas and thoughts of what they would like to see in Okehampton’s new Gateway Garden.
Beth Hamer of Growing Our Future said: ‘There are some exciting plans for the land — the most important of which is to fully involve the community of Okehampton in the design of whatever may be sited on this site.
‘We are currently working with students from Okehampton College and community groups throughout the town to launch a community participation design process.
‘We hope that the process of clearing the site to the final installation of a piece of community-initiated artwork will take less than three months.
‘Through involving the local community, we hope that whatever the final outcome of the work will be, it will be owned, respected and loved by the passers-by and utilisers of this space — the people of Okehampton.’
Beth said in planning the project, it was decided the first step should be to physically clear the land of the scrub, in order to spark people’s imaginations and get ideas of what could be located in the given space.
She said: ‘It may look a little unsightly at the moment, but Growing Our Future will be working there weekly with sixth form students from Okehampton College to tidy it up and map the area for the community planning process.’
Beth said the project had been working closely with Cllr Christine Marsh and the Highways Department of Devon County Council — Okehampton College was also giving full support.
‘We are hoping the space will be completed by the end of the Easter holidays, ready for communal use during the summer months, and that this will be a space created for the community alongside the community, therefore involving community participatory methods within the design and creation of the space,’ said Beth.
Growing Our Future is a Community Garden project based at Okehampton College. Working with artists, scientists, gardeners, global and local communities, the old, the young, individual and collective, Growing Our Future demonstrates the sharing of values and skills crossing generation, class and gender.
l Anyone who has ideas to contribute to the Gateway Garden project is invited to get involved.
You can use the cut-out site plan (above) to draw on, or write out your ideas, drawings or comments and send them to The Gateway Garden, Growing Our Future, Okehampton College, Mill Road, Okehampton, EX20 1PW by February 6.
For more information contact Growing Our Future at e-mail: growingourfuture@gmail.com

---