Matilya Njau
“Green Fingers Project“
Matilya Njau has designed our Kitchen Garden as a space for guests and volunteers to learn and grow food together.
Matilya is a gardener by trade and has spent most of her waking moments in the last five years tending to and communing with plants. Working locally in Leeds, the heart of her practice is helping people reconnect with their immediate surroundings, creating green spaces in difficult places and using gardening as a vessel to connect with self, ancestors and other human and non-human beings. She welcomes any opportunity to create food growing spaces.
And that is what brings her to the Art Hostel! Matilya has created a small green oasis in the middle of a highly polluted and exposed area, as an example of how you can create intentional and resilient green spaces even within difficult urban environments.
You will notice some raised beds featuring a fruit patch, two types of composting systems – a wormery and two hot bins and a potting area to sow seeds and pot up plants.
The front garden is a sensory space, filled with a mixture of bright and cheerful shrubs, trees and evergreen herbs. The plants have all been selected for their ability to cope with and absorb pollution, act as a green screen from the busy road and seasonal interest. You will also notice two climbing roses and some scented evergreen filled window boxes.
Under Matilya’s vision, the Kitchen Garden is intended to help the hostel reduce its environmental impact and also provide a space for people to learn how to grow crops, how to make compost and a place to connect with other guests.
“Given the concrete jungle-like nature of the area around the Art Hostel, I welcomed the chance to create a small green oasis in the middle of a highly polluted and exposed area. I wanted to show an example of how you can create intentional and resilient green spaces even within difficult urban environments.”
