3rd Year BA Design
SOIL / CARE / SELF
The garden heals... It is a space full of meaning, diversity and life.
I have been really interested in the idea of gardening to
both improve our wellbeing and save our broken planet. Living in a city as big
as London, we don’t usually have close access to green spaces, and we forget
how beneficial it is to spend time with our hands deep in the soil.
I have joined and
created communities where I have worked with others around the topic of care towards
the soil and have invited some to improve their personal human-soil relations.
We, now
more than ever, need to care. Care for the planet, care for ourselves, care for
one another. Soil-care does all that. It is an activity that requires
community and mutual aid, it gives us social support, wellbeing and improves
our environment. More than an occasional hobby or occupation, soil-care needs to be part of tomorrow. We must reconnect with nature to explore what it
can give us in terms of food, medicine, and materials.
The aim of the project is to raise awareness about the crucial
role soil-care needs to take in tomorrow’s society. Initially it was to be used by people in isolation, like in
this confinement, who don’t have access to green spaces. As the situation
evolved, so did my outcome. I realised that its audience expanded to anyone who
wishes to use the website as inspiration and as a manual to reengage with
nature, to profit from the virtues of nature and soil-care.
Ultimately,
I would like to develop my project into a tool for landscape architects and urban designers to understand better the need for soil-care on a larger scale
like in the conception of urban recreational areas.

‘I am a compostist, not a posthumanist: we are all compost, not
post-human.’
Haraway, D. Staying With the Trouble. 2016. p102
My work this year, in brief :
// Disturbing temporalities //
I experienced with different actions of care on the soil in my garden in London. These actions were time consuming and needed repeating, their effects would only show in a distant future, if regularly performed. I realised, not only I enjoyed the feeling of caring for something non-human, but the repeated action of caring for soil had a relaxing effect on me.
Design is often restricted in terms of thinking about time in relation to progress, our relationship to time is often more linear and progressive. The way Bellacasa talks about soil*, disrupts the way we are used to think of time and progress.
Through the repetitive action of soil-care in my garden in London, at the community garden and later on in Brussels, I have realised that I now think of soil-care as an action that sits in a different temporality.
I am right now, in the present, taking care of
the soil, which was created thousand years ago, while thinking of the benefits
my repeated actions will have in the future.
I am acting in the present, using
the past, thinking of the future.
*Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2015). Making time for soil: Technoscientific futurity and the pace of care. Social Studies of Science, 45(5), 691-71
Performing care becomes care for yourself
Performing care becomes care for yourself
Performing care becomes care for yourself
Performing care becomes care for yourself
// Soil is Places //
For a week, I traveled to community farms and allotments around London.
I went from Hackney, to Chelsea, to Greenwich.
I met people, asked questions, took pictures.
hover over the flowers
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// Frendsbury Garden //
The friends of
Frendsbury are working with volunteers with a
spectrum of mental disabilities and mental health issues. The organiser, Lumen, invited me to
join their weekly gardening sessions.
I felt so welcomed that I came back the next week and the week
after, and the one after that…
During the two months I spent in the garden I created strong connections with the
other volunteers, we were meeting in the sun and in the rain; we shared the
same goals, we wanted to improve our wellbeing through gardening and social
interaction and to take care of this green space which felt like a little
island of greenery and freedom within the urban jungle that is London.







// My own wormery //
During my first visit at Frendsbury I had the chance to see the palatial
three level wormery they had. I was surprised to see hundreds of slimy
creatures living in the mixture of decayed organic matter and beautifully
coloured mould.
I got jealous and wanted my own, so I bought everything I needed
and started drilling and cutting.
I followed how a piece of lettuce transformed into great compost,
same with the old pepper and the avocado skin and how five worms became 10, and
soon 100 worms were wiggling inside my box.
I became a worm-mommy.
// Brussels //
With the fast-evolving Covid-19 situation and the announcement of
Goldsmith’s closure I had to make the decision to leave London to go back to my
family home in Brussels.
I arrived in Brussels feeling displaced and confused
about the new direction my project had to take.
I was still feeling unsettled when my family came into the project
as we decided to create together a vegetable allotment in a corner of the
garden that was not really used. And there, with my hands in the dirt, surrounded
by my family, I suddenly felt better.




// Neighbour’s contributions //
My practice had been based within people and communities and
suddenly I realised I had a new community to work with, my family and neighbours .
I wrote them a letter explaining my project and asking for contributions
on the topic of Soil-Care and Self-Care, in particularly in relation to the
quarantine we were all in.
I was very surprised by the amount of answers I received. All came
from very personal feelings, emotions, and experiences.
I
realised that my project had taken, with the development of the Covid
situation, a whole other meaning triggered by the thoughts that arose from the
reality of the situation.

Here are some answers I received :
‘’The garden provides so much happiness […]. It shows us that
happiness is not so far or so complicated!’’
‘’This time of confinement is the
ideal moment to rethink the way in which we exploit, sometimes improperly, the
resources that our planet offers us.’’
‘’I remember my high school teacher told
us that it took 1 year to create 1 millimetre of soil, and that it took a
thousand years to create a meter of soil ... and that all of this could be so
quickly destroyed ...’’
‘’I contemplate the garden for long
minutes.’’
‘’It is important to rediscover our
environment and what it can provide us with food, medicines and raw materials.’’
Joining Bellacasa’s* thought about the need for
humans to be part of an ecological foodweb, I think it is important to envisage
going back to a more autonomous societal situation. Linking to my project, to improve
our human-soil relation isn’t just a personal, but a global need. We must reconnect
with nature to explore what it can give us in terms of food, medicine, and
material.
*Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2015). Making time for soil: Technoscientific futurity and the pace of care. Social Studies of Science, 45(5), 691-71
//Soil-care at home//
Another feature of the project is a set of three instructions
sheets, inspired by the disobedient objects’ exhibition, for people to start
improving their relationship with the soil. These are activites that I have
myself performed. No need to have a garden, a flowerpot is big enough.
Another feature of the project is a set of three instructions sheets, inspired by the disobedient objects’ exhibition, for people to start improving their relationship with the soil. These are activites that I have myself performed. No need to have a garden, a flowerpot is big enough.
