Sally sows the seed to transform the world into a greener, better place

Having transformed a corner of New York’s notorious Harlem district into an oasis, Sally Reckert tells Sarah Freeman why she’s now about to do the same in Richmond.

When Sally Reckert stands on the patio of her Richmond home, which boasts bird’s-eye views of the castle and the River Swale, she can’t help but think she’s looking out over one giant back garden.

It’s perhaps little surprise. Over the last few months, she has managed to persuade Richmondshire Council to hand over 12 plots of largely neglected land as part of a masterplan which will eventually see them transformed into orchards, vegetable patches and herb gardens.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Given that much of the land is overgrown and in most parts brambles have taken the place of plants, it’s not going to be easy, but then this is the woman who shortly after 9/11 walked into the crime-ridden Manhattan district of Harlem and asked whether anyone would mind awfully if she began tidying up the grounds of an historic museum and perhaps planted a few herbs.

Staff at the Morris-Jumel Mansion, once the headquarters of George Washington during the Revolutionary War, suspected she was, at best, slightly eccentric and quite possibly completely mad.

However, having honed her green-fingers working on historic gardens in England, Sally had a vision and it was one that wasn’t going to be shaken by even the most heart-stopping crime statistics. While under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s zero-tolerance approach the murder and rate had dropped significantly, it still wasn’t the kind of place a white women volunteered to wander alone.

“My husband and I had moved to New York because of his work, and as soon as we got there I began looking around for a garden which needed bringing back to life,” says Sally, who had previously tended the gardens at Lucy Cavendish College in Cambridge.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“I basically spent hours wandering around different parts of the city and one day happened to find myself in Harlem looking at this grand colonial museum. The gardens which surrounded it had been left to run wild, but there was something quite beautiful about it.”

The property – the oldest in Manhattan – had been turned into a museum, but the doors were routinely locked when the staff arrived and only re-opened at the end of the day.

“When I asked if they would mind if I came and did some work on their gardens, I think they thought I was a little bit mad,” says Sally, who is now spearheading the TRY-Growing Food Together project in North Yorkshire.

“I soon realised why. The grounds were used by a lot of the illegal immigrant children as a playground, but in the evenings it was where a lot of drug dealing took place.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Ever the optimist and reckoning those who lived nearby at least had a sense of ownership over the place, Sally got to work. Most days she would turn up, spade in hand and slowly, but surely those who had previously had the gardens all to themselves got used to the British woman who, given the opportunity, would wax lyrical about herbs.

“I wasn’t afraid to tell some of the gangs to move on and often had to ask some of the younger ones if they wouldn’t mind playing hide and seek in another part of the gardens,” says Sally.

“It was funny, because after a while a couple of the local lads started patrolling the grounds on my behalf. I supposed they reckoned there was room enough for us all.”

As Sally began to cut back the weeds, she noticed families of illegal immigrants had already planted a few herbs, and their efforts were to be the foundation of a working kitchen garden, which anyone could use. Soon, the crop of sage was being used as a natural disinfectant, marigolds provided a free alternative to sage in cooking, and evening primrose was being cultivated for its medicinal properties.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“They got what I was trying to do straight away,” says Sally. “The only thing I had to do was persuade them not to trample over plants they didn’t want or recognise to get to the ones they did, but we never once had problems with vandalism. They saw the land as theirs and really all I was doing was giving them another use for it.”

Sally and her husband returned to England five years ago, but the garden, which is now used by nearby after-school clubs, continues to thrive. She’s still in touch with the museum staff, and while she admits Richmond may share little in common with Harlem, she believes the same thinking which got people to embrace their open spaces in Manhattan could work just as well in North Yorkshire.

“When I was in New York, I also volunteered in the botanic gardens in Brooklyn,” says Sally, who trained professionally as a gardener after working in administration at Cambridge University.

“Over here, people are just grateful if anyone wants to give their time, but over there, it’s a much more structured approach. I got a call asking me what I had to offer and what I would be able to do with them.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“That’s the kind of approach I want to adopt with TRY. I want to find out what skills people have and what their interests are, so we can allocate specific projects to which they are most suited.”

Sally is not exactly a taskmaster, but she does have a masterplan for the gardens in Richmond. Some, like a herb garden outside the town’s pizza takeaway are already up and running, but others will take five, 10 or even 20 years to come to fruition.

While the project is still in its early days, the group already has 54 members. Each contributes £10 a year to pay for public liability insurance, but otherwise the scheme operates on a beg, swap and borrow philosophy.

“Yes, we could try raising money to buy a whole lot of mature plants, but that’s not really in the spirit of things,” says Sally. “Instead, we’ve already started apple grafting to bring back some native species to the area. The hope is that if we can get people inspired by growing something from scratch, then they will be able to share their experience and knowledge with others.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The grow-your-own initiative is part of the wider Transition Richmond project, which is trying to engage the community in everything from recycling to green energy.

“Obviously, the trick is getting as many people involved as possible. We’ve already done some work with schools and I hope through small projects like the pizza herb garden they will be able to see that what we are doing is relevant to them.

“While a lot of the work, initially at least, is about cutting back brambles and getting rid of the weeds, we do want to keep a sense of the wild. It’s not all that long ago that families would go out picking berries and each often had their own favourite area. Unfortunately, people have become so scared about what’s safe to eat and what’s not that we’ve become detached from nature.

“We’re all guilty of going into supermarkets and expecting our fruit and veg to be there all clean and shiny and nicely packed, but the world is changing and in many ways we need to get back to basics and start doing something for ourselves.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“I don’t see it as being particularly Big Society, I just think that if you want somewhere nice to live and where there is a sense of community, then sometimes you have to put in a bit of work in.”

More information is available from Sally at [email protected] or on 01748 822640.

Related topics: