Dorrel Bennett-Creary
Dorrel is a volunteer at Loughborough Farm in south London, a patchwork of community growing spaces on pieces of derelict or underused land. The main site is on Loughborough Road where they produce food throughout the year for volunteers, local residents and The Platform Cafe, their community cafe.
To celebrate Jamaican Independence Day (6 August), we filmed Dorrel at Loughborough Farm singing a few traditional Jamaican songs and discussing what the community garden has meant to her.
Film by Federico Rivas.
Mr Pink
I do believe I play a great part in England here… I create a part of Jamaica here I developed it up to heaven-likeness.
My self, my house here, my voice and everything is like a rainbow – Mr. Pink
Mr Brenton Pink migrated to the United Kingdom in 1967 and ten years later bought a house on Loampit Hill in Lewisham for £4,880.
Mr Pink – for that was his real name – was a local character – but without the film made by Helena Appio so few people would know his life story nor what the inside of the house had looked like, nor that he had made records of his music.
He transformed the house and garden through sculpture and painting inside and outside. The sculptural decorations are at risk and the garden is neglected. Brenton Pink died in 2017.
Mr Pink was one of the inspirations for the Sowing Roots project and exhibition. His story is an example of how Caribbean heritage is so fragile.
Mr Pink had a collection of hats which he decorated – they were his ‘crowns’. He wore them when gardening.
Documentary directed by Helena Appio
Esiah Levy
Esiah Levy, known as Rodney Levy to his family, created SeedsShare in 2016. This involved growing vegetables in his back garden, saving the seeds and then sending them to people around the world for the cost of postage. He hoped that people would send different seeds back to him, to grow, save and send. He came to the Garden Museum in January 2018 to take part in Incredible Edible Lambeth’s Seed Swap event sharing seeds that he’d grown.
Esiah was born in Croydon in July 1986, was married and a father to two young sons. The Garden Museum had hoped to interview Esiah for our Sowing Roots: Caribbean Garden Heritage project but in January 2019, Esiah passed away very suddenly, at the age of 32.
When we finally embarked on the Sowing Roots project in 2020, we still wanted to include Esiah Levy’s story. We set about trying to make contact with his family. Food writer (and Great British Bake-Off finalist) Ruby Tandoh had written about him. It was by contacting Ruby directly that we were introduced to Esiah’s widow Kealy and his sister Syreeta who both agreed to be interviewed and part of our Sowing Roots exhibition.