Rhyme and reason grow in our jungle

Sep 8 2005 Birmingham Post

When Balsall Heath residents got together to grow food in their back yards, pears and plums were not the only fruit of their labours.

Tonight they will be harvesting the poems, stories and songs that have also been cultivated. Jo Ind reports...

When Chris Duggan set up an organisation to encourage people to grow their own fruit and vegetables in Balsall Heath, he had not envisaged poetry sprouting from the soil.

His aim in founding Balsall Heath Jungle six years ago was to create an environment fit for children to grow up in which for him meant more trees, more plants and less exhaust fumes.

"I had no desire to go and build a little house on the prairie or in a national park," he says. "I wanted to dig and delve in the place that was already my home, but not in isolation, I wanted to be part of a digging and delving community."

Today Jungle is a thriving membership organisation which, amongst other things, runs weekly gardening sessions for children at local schools and two weekly drop in days where people can share lunch and get gardening advice.

It is shortly to become a registered charity and aims to evolve into a community enterprise, providing training for Balsall Heath people and establishing an organic garden centre which is beautiful to walk round as well as source of all that you need to buy to garden naturally.

Meanwhile, as a by-product or maybe as a necessary part of the process, words have been growing through countless conversations across shared lunches, in gardens and allotments. Stories and poems have been written.

Tonight members will be holding an evening of poetry, music and stories to celebrate the art which has sprouted amongst them.

The celebration will be part of the series of events known as Oasis Cafe Theatre which was started by Julie Boden, Birmingham's Poet Laureate 2002/3 and is supported by The Orange Book Festival and the Orange Studio.

"I think that poetry and gardening go together very well," says Chris, who is a poet as well as a gardener. "I'm not sure why.

"I don't want to go into the cliche of pastoral poems. It's something a bit different from that. I think words are a natural response to the experience of beauty.

"Any experience of beauty or delight can make people want to sing in some sense, whether that be in the form of a story or a poem, or just telling people about it.

"But it's not just an experience of beauty, so in that sense it's different from the pastoral tradition.

"The engagement of human beings with the garden happens on more than on level. There's the fact that you're active with your body, so there's work there as well and you have to think about what you're doing."

Another difference between Jungle's poetry and that of the pastoral tradition is that it is rooted in the inner city rather than the rolling countryside.

"Balsall Heath has special qualities," says Chris. "Firstly you're kind of hanging on to this green, which is surrounded by the built environment, which makes it more precious to those who can appreciate it.

"Secondly, it is a melting pot of cultures, where people bring their own experiences of plants and planting from other parts of the world and there own culinary needs as well. Apparently a lot of the coriander for sale on the Ladypool Road is grown on local allotment as fresh coriander doesn't travel very well."

Eating freshly grown food is very much part of what Jungle members enjoy.

"The women who are dropping in on Thursdays are really enjoying swapping recipes," says Chris. "People cook together some things that have been brought in, so there's that experience of continuity from the ground to the mouth, which is broken completely by supermarket culture, pre-cooking and pre-packaging.

"This is the opposite, bringing it all back within the community, rooting it within the soil again."

There will be samples of dishes to be tasted at the event and the sharing of recipes.

There will also be a short story by children's author Mandy Ross, songs by the Heathan Sisters, photographs of local trees on display and an opportunity buy seeds, see a fruiting tree and compost a poem.

One member of Balsall Heath Jungle tells a story about a branch which had fallen from a pomegranate tree in Pakistan and which took root in the soil.

"Today there are still five pomegranate trees from that cutting bearing fruit in our gardens, which give us hundreds of pomegranates each year - plenty to eat ourselves and enough to give away to friends and relatives," she says.

"Those words epitomise the flourishing of plants and ideas in a fertile and tolerant community," say Chris. "We would like to give away some of that richness."