Roma News and Views: Growing in Our Back Court
Slovak Roma Tomas and his mum Vera have created a garden in their backcourts where they grow fruits, vegetables and flowers. Tomas has a vision impairment which makes his eyes extremely sensitive to light – however this does not stop him gardening. We headed to his garden to find out more…
Interview by Dorota Gombarova and Toni Bruce
Can you tell us a little bit about your gardening?
Tomas: I like to garden and grow, but at the moment I don’t really have the right tools for it.
What do you like about gardening?
T: I like planting things for people to see and be happy. I’ve been gardening for three years now.
Why did you start?
T: I just wanted my garden to look nice. There was a lot of broken stuff here. We just wanted to clean it up and make it look nice and grow plants.
How long did it take to clean up the rubbish?
Vera: It took a long time, we had to take things one by one out of the garden, cleaning took a while and we got help from our neighbours, Nina and Katie. Tomas is out every day, looking at the plants, cleaning the front and the back. Raining or not, he’s outside! His eyesight may not be good but he still does it.
Read more: History and Culture of the Roma People
What sort of things do you like to grow?
T: Flowers, potatoes, onions, other vegetables – but I mainly like to plant flowers.
Why do you prefer to plant flowers?
V: We planted a lot of flowers in Slovakia, we wanted to bring them here as well. From a very young age Tomas would come with me and help with the garden and growing vegetables. From when he was about eight years old.
What do you do with the vegetables you grow?
T: We cook with them, different dishes with chicken and potatoes in particular.
V: We’ve done everything here ourselves, we’re happy with people helping us. Sometimes other people don’t respect what we’re doing. Now that we’ve done all this, fixed the garden up, and people just keep staring at us from the windows: ‘Oh it’s ‘them’ doing that. It’s Slovaks doing that, we thought they’re not that clean’. So we are changing people’s minds about us.
Do you think it would be better if more people had gardens like yours?
V: Yes it would be good if more people did this. But I think people would say: ‘Oh, it’s not my garden, I don’t have to look after it’
How do you change people’s minds?
V: If they have it clean in their house they should have it in their garden as well!