Herb gardens and street pianos

02 September 2010

herb1 Now here’s a great idea for sustainable communities in Scotland. Herb gardens on streets in communities and town centres. They’re planted with – guess what! – herbs, and local people are being encouraged not only to come along and nip a sprig of parsley but to adopt and look after their box gardens. And when they’ve done that they can play a few bars of Catch a Falling Star on the piano, or indeed I Never Promised You a Herb Garden (but here’s one anyway).

Enjoy Your Street Garden

This is an initiative by Going Carbon Neutral Stirling (other community organisations please consider copying). In the first phase of the project there’s going to be 30 containers in the town centre and suburbs, as well as surrounding towns and villages. Research has shown that communities who take action to improve their streets, often starting with small improvements such as flower baskets, enjoy the benefits of increased neighbourliness and decreased vandalism.

GCNS manager, Rachel Nunn, said “We hope they will inspire people to join with neighbours in re-shaping shared spaces as well as discovering the joys of growing your own food. … Through taking ownership of our streets, we can build stronger communities, better equipped to tackle tougher challenges such as carbon reduction.” And, she didn’t add, provide a tasty feast of thyme, mint, chive, tarragon, parsley, oregano, curry plant, sage and rosemary for the nice bunny rabbits! There’s an excellent leaflet, Enjoy your new street garden, about this. There’s not, as far as I know, a downloadable version, but I’m sure the nice people at GCNS will send you one if you ask nicely. Contact details on website.

This seems to me a great idea. Therefore it will come as no surprise that Stirling Council is less than fully enthusiastic and supportive. There’s a report in the latest Stirling Observer (not available online) saying that the Council are concerned about safety issues (now would anyone have guessed such a thing!) in the siting of these boxes and the GCNS people should have consulted them about it. In response Rachel Nunn (see above) said that they have been consulting but for a long time without much progress being made (now would anyone have guessed such a thing?) and so they decided just to go ahead. Quite right too and good luck to them! And if you happen to read this, Rachel, do post a comment below!

But what about the street pianos, I hear you ask. As part of the Celebrate Rosemount festival in Aberdeen, three pianos were placed on the pavement for locals, visitors, anyone passing by, however skilled or not so, to tinkle the ivories. Even dogs – at least there was a news photo of a dog with his paws on the keys. Perhaps it was posed (would anyone have guessed such a thing?). This has been tried elsewhere and it was a great success in Aberdeen, with zero piano vandalism. Perhaps some community group could place pianos beside their herb boxes, or perhaps a street harp. Click for BBC Radio Scotland report on Rosemount pianos.

Catch a falling star was most famously sung by Perry Como, 1957. It’s fairly easy to play for piano beginners. And the lyrics are absolutely wonderful, sheer poetry – no, I’m not joking, they surely are, judge for yourself.

Catch a falling star an’ put it in your pocket,
Never let it fade away!
Catch a falling star an’ put it in your pocket,
Save it for a rainy day!

This article was written by Herb Garden with advice on musical matters from Dame Cheryl Cole.