Honeyscribe
1 – 3pm Monday to Sunday
Come and celebrate our Peninsula Garden and discover the special nature of this bio-diverse green space. We have our own Honeyscribe – Amy Shelton – who will be working from the garden shed to chart the floral sources available to bees and create a temporary herbarium studio where she will press and preserve samples of the plants she finds growing in the locale.
Each day from 1 to 3pm, Shelton will open the doors to visitors, and engage children and families in her work by offering the opportunity to create a beeswax coated drawing to take home with them inspired by the bees and flowers they will observe in Amy’s studio. Visitors to the studio shed will be able to make drawings, explore the qualities of honey and beeswax and see an artist at work.
The unique substance of melted beeswax, with its heady aroma and extraordinary preserving qualities, is a great way to engage children in thinking about bees. The sensory activity of painting the beeswax onto their drawings transforms the drawing into a special thing which the child can treasure.
Using the shed on the Greenwich Peninsula as a studio from which to work, Amy Shelton will set up her flower presses and make a collection of the plants in bloom across the site starting from the orchard and wild flower garden and then the wider scope of the Peninsula. One of Amy Shelton’s lightboxes will be on display in the shed throughout the residency. The lightbox artwork will illuminate the plants that flowered in the spring time (Snowdrops, Snake’s Head Fritillaries, Dandelions, Apple Blossom, Crocuses) that are the most important sources of pollen and nectar to the emerging bees. The idea will be to relay how the fleeting blooms are so vital across the seasons, and help people identify the plants that are best for pollinators.