What Will The Harvest Be?

A holistic project about how people create genius loci

Project: A commission to develop a public & community garden at Abbey Gardens, a protected site in East London, not far from the 2012 Olympic Village. The site contains the remains of a 14th century Cistercian Abbey (St. Mary Stratford Langthorne, Essex) and will be adjacent to a new extension of the Docklands Light Railway opening in 2010.

Collaborators: Friends of Abbey Gardens
Commissioner: Modus Operandi for Newham Council

Our proposals for the garden cover three years of development and relate back to its Cistercian origins when the monks used the land as a site of great productivity. The local Newham area – in a state of immanent change and growth – provides an inspiring context, bringing in new transport links, new residents and commuters, and in time the Olympic visitors and competitors. Historically this echoes the hub of travelers, commerce, debate and food production that the medieval Cistercian Abbey, once sited at the heart of a much larger garden, would have been. Later influences such as wartime ‘Dig for Victory’ allotments and the early 20th century Newham agricultural ‘squatters’, the Plaistow Landgrabbers have also inspired us.