By Mattie O’Callaghan, Horticultural Trainee
Our Horticultural Trainee Mattie recently spent a weekend on a gardening placement at Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, the former home of artist, gardener, film-maker and activist Derek Jarman. They share an account of the weekend here:
On an early autumnal weekend, the sun casts a shadow on the dragon teeth across the shingle, glowing strong as it sets over us gardening at Prospect Cottage. Kindly invited by Prospect’s gardener Jonny Bruce, I was here to join several others for a working weekend in Dungeness. Wrapped in a thick woollen jumper, I came here to nestle closer to Derek Jarman and his garden, but what I learnt out on the exposed shingle was that this was now a collectively tended space, full of the care and collaboration of so many hands.
The cottage and its concentric circles of poppies, irises, roses, echiums, sea kale, foxgloves and many other cultivated plants kissing wild ones, has often been mistaken for a retreat. I no doubt felt like I also needed one after a busy couple of months finishing my masters in Landscape Architecture while beginning new work. What Jarman came for here was not isolation, but confrontation, as Jonny says he arrived here the same year he was diagnosed with HIV. Slowly planting a boundary-less garden through the organic collection of stones, driftwood and experimenting with plants was a form of political protest against the rigidity and judgement of both British society and its horticulture. The cottage became a site for making films, writing, finding strength and solace, and for showing how despite the harsh landscape, things could grow.
As we sat around together for lunch on the first day, Jonny told us about how both Keith Collins, Jarman’s companion, and himself became care-takers of Jarman’s garden, where they gardened together until Keith’s death in 2018. The very raised beds we were sat on, inspired by Peter Korn’s work with planting in sand, were recently made on the series of working weekends Jonny has instigated. In this way, Jarman’s garden rising up out of the shingle had inspired us all, not as a museum, but as a lived-in, cared-for, and evolving space.
After a golden afternoon weeding and weaving a dead hedge and making broom sculptures we delicately carried our bags into the cottage for the night. Each corner was filled with precious stones, shells, wood carvings, paintings; and intricate treasures. Our careful wonder was broken by Jonny’s dogs Frida and Nohni launching themselves with great energy through the cottage, by a kettle set to boil and plenty of biscuits. We were made to feel instantly at home; the home Jarman made, but has been continually loved.
Those of us on this working weekend had come to Prospect Cottage from backgrounds as gardeners, architects, artists, charity workers, florists and ecologists. As we settled into each other and the landscape, conversations about labour, maintenance and care began to circulate. The reason Prospect remains special is because Jonny gardens here once a month and hosts people with great generosity for working weekends in Spring and Autumn. In the gardens or communities we work in, it is this constant process of tending to the land which means that these places can continue to be important for those who spend time in them.
In the morning we awoke to the smells of freshly cooked porridge and toast, and we met local entomologist Sean Clancy, who helped up identify the moths we’d caught in the starlit night, including lunar underwings, gold spots, and canary-shouldered thorn. The winds had since picked up and we braved its coolness, cutting back and editing the beds ready for autumn, and planting out verbascums, sea thrifts and poppies. As part of my work in landscape architecture, I’ve been research how we can queer planting design. So much of this is built around this idea of challenging boundaries between ourselves and plants, but also about how we need to care for those who look after our land.
Queer communities have so often paid attention to bodies and labour, investing in mutual aid networks and challenging exploitative and neglectful practices. Jarman’s experience of HIV brought him to think a lot about his body’s relationship to the landscape. Bodily labour has so consistently been undervalued, but it is this work of gardeners which allows the garden to continue to flourish for everyone.
With permission granted for the Garden Museum’s Lambeth Green project to create a horticultural training centre and new garden, moves are being made in thinking about investing in people and skills to look after our cultural and ecological spaces. When we’re making new or honouring past landscapes, more could be done to invest into people for longer term maintenance and care.
As part of the Art Fund, money is set aside for Jonny to look after the space as well as transport and supply us with delicious local food from the Dungeness Snack Shack. Across the weekend with the openness of the garden, many members of the public came to enjoy the garden. It’s not just people who visit, but the moths we found, a local fox, and the delicate ecosystem of the national nature reserve. We left with full bellies, new friends and a greater appreciation of how by working together we could make sure this was a site everyone could feel welcome in.
Taking the experience of gardening at Prospect, I’ll be continuing my research around queering landscapes in an upcoming residency here in the cottage for two weeks in April, commissioned by Creative Folkestone, its current custodians. This is another example of how the garden continues to live beyond death and how it has inspired a whole community of caretakers led by Jonny.
Many thanks to Jonny Bruce, Josh Burge, Sean Clancy, Kit Clarke, James Holden, Benny Hawksbee, Glenn Howard, Åsa Johannesson, Aimee Lockwood, Ella Malt, Emily Warren and Nick Wood for a wonderful weekend.
You can read more about my research here in a recent article for Radicle and on in a recent post. More information about Prospect Cottage Residencies can be found here. You can find me on Instagram @mattie.ocallaghan.