One of the most interesting things that have happened to us during this project was the unexpected guests. We started with one small private kindergarten, then they said to somebody else about our workshops and our garden,  and they said to another teacher. Finally we became a "hidden gem" for spring and summer activities not only for the people we intended , but also for people we had no idea knew about us!  The day we realized we have already make ourselves known was the day we had two ( 2) primary teachers calling from two different kindergartens willing to come and participate in one of our workshops. Of course this was in a day, we already have booked a gathering with the locals and the kids from the residential care centre, so we had to choose - do we want to cancel or will we just have 3 workshops in one day with over 40 people? Guess what we choose..We started at 9 am with the first group of really young children ( 2-4 years old), then another group came at 11:00 am and them our original workshop was at 6 in the evening until ...quite late;)) We had a really good time realizing we are the "new kids on the block" and people recognize not only who we are, but more importantly what we do. 

Many of the pictures from this day are just me smiling in a selfie mode with people exploring the garden behind me. I really liked this day and to me this for now is the best workday for this project

When we wanted to create the Social Garden we had in mind several things- we see that elderly people in the rural areas are lonely. We also see youngsters suffering social exclusion due to a variety of reasons in the big city. We saw it was a different kind of loneliness and exclusion and wanted just to provide safe space for sharing with the tools of gardening. Bulgaria is one of the most diverse countries in the context of herbs, but not many people know that and respect this local heritage. I remember both my grandparents Ivanka and Marin telling stories about what you can eat from the forest and what not, how to make difference between healthy herbs and useless weeds and when I met my wife, who is from the same region of Central Bulgaria, we ended up having similar childhood memories for herbs. On the other hand we had the youngsters from the Social teahouse, who ...lets put it like that - they did not have my childhood experience of caring grandparents telling stories for herbs. Some of the youngsters who are in social state care institutions don't even know the names of their grandparents. So I really wanted to mix these two lonely groups of people through herbs and gardening and  I have had this idea proven several times in my daily routines, when I was building my house. Elderly people would come to me and just start telling stories about how things should be done, what I am missing, why I should not put the fence on top of this flower, because it is actually valuable and things like that. You can choose to get angry when elderly people from the village tell you what to do,or you can just let them be and listen. And that is what I did. 

The first few times we had children and youngsters over in Benkovski for workshops with the elderly people it was not a huge success. There was just distrust from both sides. I realized that at the same time I am trying to organize a workshop, but also to do gardening, and also at the same time do ice-breakers. And I slowly realized I needed help. In the beginning of the project we found Elitsa. She has a very dynamic upbringing and childhood and even though she was raised in a social state care institution, she actually had a really good understanding of how children are raised without their parents, as she was raised by her grandma. Also her love for gardening layed there, as my own and my wife's. When we met Elitsa we were very desperate to make a formula where one person does gardening and one person does ice-breakers, communication exercises, facilitates discussion, etc. Long story short- Elitsa had a background in landscape design, gardening, working a few years in a gardening business and she was the most patient and hard working person to join our team. With her we did wonders the first months! Eventually when she got her regular job back and we still faced the same problem we found Stoyan. A volunteer, who is a professional gardener and owns a small greenery business. I am not sure who approached woh first, but we ended up having regular workshops with the kids from the family centre every Thursday at 10 and he even started to consider hiring one of the youngsters once the project is finished.

I think this is a very important story, because sometimes as a start you want to do everything alone. And you want it now. But that is very...impossible. If it was not for Elitsa and Stoyan, maybe I would still be struggling with what to do to balance our meetings, how to be everywhere and do everything, And sometimes it all comes naturally and people find each other.

In October 2020 we decided to stat with our idea to empower, connect and make people happy through gardening and growing herbs. There are many reasons why this is a good idea- people relax during gardening activities, they are fun, you enjoy each other's company while learning from nature. But there was one reason that nearly failed the start of our amazing idea- rain and cold. In the Varna region, where we function there is generally a very warm and enjoyable autumn and we have experienced it so many times we did not even consider checking the weather before planning our first workshop. The first workshop itself was just removing old branches, dead grass, dried unhealthy weeds and generally a lot of physical work on one nice 800 sq m field behind our strawbale house in the village of Benkovsksi. We gathered a few volunteers, a few youngsters and a few locals with a nice lunch. And it just would not stop raining the whole afternoon. We ate lunch, had a beer and went home. No work was done, but the first workshop was more or less started. For our second meeting but first actual work meeting, this time we checked the weather. It was not raining, but we ended up freezing and mainly sitting around the bonfire and sharing stories - from the local grandpa Kiro to the youngsters from the Teahouse, who have no families. And again- two workshops later we had absolutely no work done- only stories, small ice breakers and a lot of mud and some running noses from the cold. After this two time failure of planning we finally started in November ( which was for some reason warmer) with the actual work and our team got Elitsa on board- an amazing young lady who brought the sun with us and organized several cleaning days so we could finally reach ...the start!