After a really long gestation for her latest album, The Garden, the Oamaru musician known as Swingbridge released it last week. The artist behind Swingbridge, Bridget Ellis, started recording the album in 2018, but its journey began much earlier than that. Ellis has written the songs over the past 20 years – Day to Day was written when her teenage boys were just toddlers. The Garden covers a range of topics from parenting to “care and concern about the environment” and personal themes. Her favourite song is the title track, The Garden . Inspired by a personal experience and a dry season in Oamaru, the song was a metaphor for a dry garden that appeared dead, but came back to life after a fall of rain.