In response to a local council decision to make the abandoned railway line into a new establishment, the leader of the Grow Slow Garden produced a newsletter to convince the local city council and community that the land should be established into a community garden. In a positive and passive tone, the writer tries to convince the readers to join together in their proposal.
The heading of the newsletter uses a pun on the words, “on the rails,” to attract the audience and remind them of the debated issue. The writer begins with “everyone knows” to include the reader in the issue and this inclusive language continues with “we’ll all be able to get behind the project.” In the introduction the writer marks the establishment as, “currently good for rats, snakes and those few anti-socials” to immediately plant in the readers head that the establishment is not beneficial to society. This imagery placed in the readers head at the start of the newsletter is a stark contrast to the project that the Grow Slow Group wish to undertake.
The pun, “to clear the air” refers not only to the misinformation and misguided comments about the land, but it portrays to the audience a sense that the garden would have a positive environmental effect. The writer also states that it is, “high time the Council took notice of international trends”, this makes the audience feel that their society is behind and in order to catch up they need to support the idea of the community garden. This idea is followed further on in the article, where the writer uses the statistic that the number of people who eat food from urban farms and community gardens is in the “hundreds of millions”. This suggests to the audience that they should be following this trend like the many other individuals. Furthermore, the writer outlines the land as a, “shocking neglected wasteland” and then juxtaposes it with, “fresh natural land”. The stark contrast makes the reader favourable of their proposal. The first few paragraphs undermine the council as not being caring enough towards the establishment, however the fifth paragraph starts with the flattering phrase, “This forward thinking council, ” is to ensure that they are not getting the Council off side.
The tone of the newsletter shifts at the sixth paragraph and the article starts to appeal to nostalgia. The writer uses an example of during the Second World War where, “everyone in Britain was urged to ‘Dig for Victory’ by growing vegetables” To reiterate this further a poster from that time period is present in the newsletter. This idea of nostalgia is escalated further as the writer states “The Queen herself has converted some land at Buckingham Palace into a food garden, just as vegies were grown there in her childhood” The references to royals and people in places of power owning their own food garden portrays to the audience that growing food is the way to go, therefore they are more likely to be persuaded and support the community garden. The writer outlines all the