This week, Head Gardener of Horatio’s Garden London & South East, Ashley Edwards, featured in a series of fantastic online conversations hosted by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN UK).
Ashley appeared as part of the third thoughtful discussion, Connecting Communities, joining a brilliant panel that attracted over 130 live attendees. Together with ecologically focussed grower and star of Channel 4’s ‘The Great Garden Revolution’, Poppy Okotcha, founder of Incredible Edible Bristol, Sara Venn and horticultural activist Sui Searle, the case was made for gardens being places that should surround us and, crucially, it was argued that these places should be accessible to all.
To watch the recorded discussion, please click here
PAN UK are the only charity in the country who promote using safe, sustainable alternatives to hazardous pesticides, which are often problematically sprayed in public spaces throughout our local communities.
Going pesticide-free requires councils, local organisations and residents to work together to find adapted solutions, which is PAN UK’s ultimate aim. As such, they hope that their recent series of talks will help everyone to make moves in the right direction by highlighting the importance of valuing green spaces and wildlife in our cities.
The Reassembling Our Cities programme consists of four talks in total: Our Resilient Neighbours, celebrating the plants on our streets and how they came to be there; Space for Us All, investigating the diversity of our urban wildlife; Connecting Communities, examining the potential of our green urban areas to be varied and generous spaces for all and finally Abundant Green Networks, which reimagines our urban spaces as a patchwork of solutions to our many diverse needs.
The Connecting Communities discussion was both brilliant and insightful, just as the rest of the PAN UK summer series has been. We’re delighted to have seen Ashley making a meaningful contribution alongside countless others and hope that it has helped to make everyone more aware of and active in supporting PAN UK’s mission.
