What makes flowers grow

It’s more council rot, but this time it’s a good thing

My other passion (after social networking and local government improvement) is gardening. So I was excited to find two stories in this month’s The Garden, a magazine for RHS members, which combine these elements in one way or another.

Paul Bettison, Leader at Bracknell Forest Borough Council and Chair of the Local Government Association’s Environment board, has a leader promoting the benefits of composting – both the at-home variety and council compositing.

I hope all gardeners, if they can’t compost at home, will get a council green-waste bin (whatever colour it is) – and then collect the resultant compost for use on their gardens. And I hope we see forever an end to previous, recyclable green waste going to waste.

The article was in aid of promoting the Compost Awareness Week – which runs from 4 to 10 May this year. The campaign website www.compostawarenessweek.org.uk has a host of resources for councils and gardeners.

Fields of poppies, row on row

The other article was about the Clapton Park Estate in Hackney. It’s a really interesting story of how a tenant run estate and their “micro” approach to tendering for grounds maintenance resulted in a thousand flowers blooming. The residents approached a company run by brothers John and Robert Little that had never done grounds maintenance before (but had worked with them on other development projects) and the results are amazing.

Instead of edging lawns with bare earth sprayed down with herbicides the contractors planted mini-meadows with poppies and other tough self-seeding annuals. (It looks something like this.) Martyn Cox writes in The Garden:

It is clear that the locals enjoy the flowers. A passer-by calls out ‘keep up the good work’, while Adele Shuster, who has lived on the estate for more than 30 years, says it has improved people’s lives immensely. ‘Whether you are waiting at the bus stop or just looking out the window, seeing all the colour helps lift your spirits,’ she says.

John Little also described how they had removed scraggly beds of tired tea roses at the behest of locals and replaced them herbs and vegetables that residents maintain and harvest.

The magazine is looking for further examples of innovating communal gardening – you can write to them schemes from your area at thegarden AT rhs.org.uk (reconstruct the email in the usual way).

CABE consultation

I found out from Kevin Harris’s Neighbourhoods blog that CABE (the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) have set up a survey for community groups to find out what they need to help them create better open spaces. He says:

it’s not necessarily the redesign of spaces that should be prioritised, nor even provision of funding for creative solutions, but facilitating the release of energy by bringing people together and helpng them shape their own ideas: ie community development. Plus a few hundred quid maybe for a tent, some tables and a BBQ

Whether it’s poppies or vegetables or space for a little BBQ, this is all about creating a sense of joy and purpose in our public spaces. And I, for one, think that can make all the difference to community life.

Photo credits: The finished compost bin originally uploaded by London Permaculture and used here under a Creative Commons license.

and Chelsea Flower Show 2007 used by permission of Teresa Gomez