Since transitioning into horticulture so many incredible opportunities, experiences and wonderful people have entered my life beautifully affirming my decision to leave teaching🌸🌱 At some point I will create a video full of secret gardens, good people, rare species and the odd black tie ball but today I just want to share this pic as it is the one that fills my heart with so much hope, sadness, gratitude, inspiration and motivation for the future xx

So I was walking home from work and I saw a man breaking down the door of a rotten and disused shed. We got talking and he explained that he was unhoused and that he was going to live in the (tiny dirty rotten) shed as it was better than sleeping on the streets. I didn’t have any cash but I had lots and lots of packets of seeds for my community garden. I offered a couple of packets of food and flowers seeds and he happily took them- pointing to a crack in the pavement where a bit of soil had collected and a couple of scanty weeds had started to grow and he said “I’ll plant them there”. We said good bye and I went home. A couple of days later, I walked along the same road and saw that in front of his shed “home” the man had built a garden from a discarded bookcase and plant pots he’d found🌱🌱🌱. As angry as I felt that there are people having to live in sheds in a country with so many empty homes and retail wastage- I was inspired by his tenacity and refusal to allow the failings of our society to take away his humanity. The next day I dropped off some compost, gardening tools and gloves. I haven’t bumped into him again but I smile as I see his garden continues to grow. Xx To me gardening is so many things: it’s connection to nature, it’s activism, it’s pride, it’s food autonomy, it’s mental health, it’s medicinal, it’s culture, it’s kindness, it’s ownership, it’s resistance, it’s creative expression, it’s rebellion, it’s community and it’s love and for me this simple photo symbolises it all! Xx #seedsofdestiny #careerchanger #seedsofchange #community