Category: Community projects

7th February 2017

A New Orchard for Vale Street

London was once full of orchards – in gardens, parks and commercial spaces. Most have long since been built over or neglected, and the skills needed to tend fruit trees are largely lost. The Open Orchard Project is part of a movement to reverse this trend, working with communities to plant and care for fruit trees in public places, build links between residents and green the city.

The newest of these orchards was planted in early February on Vale Street, with three trees in the Tritton Vale Pocket Garden and eight on the corner with Carnac Street, opposite the Vincennes Estate. Residents, along with families from nearby Elm Wood Primary School and friends from further afield, worked with Mich Thill, Kat Lochmann and Wayne Trevor of Open Orchard to plant apples (eating, cider and cooking), pears, and a range of stone fruit for preserving, cooking and eating straight from the tree.

Right from the start of the project in early 2016, the Tritton Vale Pocket Garden team were impressed by local people’s passion for fruit trees. It was clear that we had to plant as many of the requested trees as we had room for, and it was great to get the long-awaited cider apple, cherry and plum trees planted.

But there is a deeper significance to the varieties selected: all have some connection to France. They were chosen by Open Orchard, in consultation with Gipsy Hill residents, to recognise this area’s commemoration of the heroes of the French resistance. The Vincennes Estate, which overlooks the new orchard, was built by Lambeth in 1964. It was named in memory of World War II resistance heroes including Violette Szabó and Lilian Rolfe, both of whom had local connections. Remembrance Day services are held at the Vincennes war memorial on the estate.

Varieties in the new orchard include the greengage Reine Claude de Bavay, the late-season Bigarreau Gaucher cherry and the traditional French mirabelle, Mirabelle de Metz. While Metz is remembered as the site of one of the major battles of World War II, the surrounding countryside is also famed for its production of this versatile little plum. We’re pleased to have participated in this positive project, and look forward to blossom on Vale Street this spring!

8th December 2016

Replanting the Rookery

This article was published in the Autumn/Winter 2016 edition of London Landscapes. I was especially pleased that the editor, Susan Miles, chose some of my images to use alongside those by Joel Antunes.

15th May 2016

Designing for remembrance

Garden of Remembrance, Marburg, Germany, by scape Landschaftsarchitekten GmbH, Düsseldorf, Germany

There is an open space in Marburg’s otherwise built-up city grid, a space that marks a significant absence. A synagogue designed by architect Wilhelm Spahr stood here from its completion in 1897 until its destruction on “Kristallnacht” — Nov. 9, 1938. From that point forward, the Nazi regime escalated the persecution of the Jews in Germany and Austria. Many synagogues were destroyed, along with the communities that built them.

All but annihilated in the first half of the 20th century, Marburg’s Jewish community has since begun to rebuild itself, and its members have been determined to turn what had long been a gap in the urban fabric into a space that would be both a meaningful memorial to the people and culture destroyed in the pogroms and a public space integrated into the life of the city.

Read the full article here.

16th March 2016

Narrative in design

In this article for Landscape Architecture Network, Can landscape architects use history to make a city stronger?, I explore the importance of a strong narrative – in this case the city’s history – in creating a new design to revitalise the city centre.

Cities must adapt if they are to survive. Faced with a shrinking, aging population in its city center, the municipality of Celje resolved to redesign and revive Celje’s open public spaces. For the most recent stage of this work, they engaged Darja Matjašec, Sergej Hiti, and Klara Sulič of LUZ. As landscape architects working in Slovenia, LUZ’s designers are experienced in negotiating the delicate balance between honoring the past and creating spaces for the future.

Read the full article here.

15th February 2016

The White Garden in Context

This article first appeared in the August 2014 edition of Common Knowledge, the newsletter of the Friends of Streatham Common. The illustration, taken from a contemporary postcard, shows visitors admiring the newly-opened White Garden.

‘Whoever had the inspiration to plan part of the ground solely for white flowers must have been blessed with the simplicity of genius. The Garden is unique, and offers a charming prospect to the eye.’

Writing in the Westminster Gazette just after the newly acquired and redesigned Rookery Garden opened to the public in July 1913, this commentator was impressed by the White Garden’s innovative colour palette. White gardens were becoming fashionable among the elite of the day, but the Rookery’s popular White Garden remained unique among London’s public parks until well into the twentieth century.

Influences

William Robinson, an Irish gardener who came to England in 1862, was a key influence on gardens like the Rookery. Robinson advocated ‘wild gardening’, rejecting the carpet bedding and overly formal gardening styles that had emerged from the new wealth and technological advances of the Industrial Revolution in favour of the dense planting of hardy perennials in naturalistic drifts. ‘Wild gardening’ , combined with the Arts and Craft movement’s regard for rural traditions, led to the trend for mixed herbaceous borders using hardy perennials.

Gertrude Jekyll, a friend of Robinson, was another hugely influential garden designer. A trained artist, she did much to popularize colour-themed borders. The White Garden created at Hidcote by Lawrence Johnston in the early 1900s, one of the first of many English white gardens, was influenced by both Jekyll and Thomas Mawson, author of The Art and Craft of Garden Making.

The most famous popularizer of the idea of white gardens, Vita Sackville-West, did not start to plant her ‘grey, green and white garden’ at Sissinghurst until 1949. Sackville-West gardened in the tradition of Robinson and Jekyll, and was influenced by Hidcote. Since her mother briefly owned a house in Streatham, she might even have gathered inspiration from the Rookery’s White Garden!

Unearthing the past

Thanks to the Westminster Gazette’s enthusiastic reporter, we know that the first White Garden planting scheme included roses, foxgloves, hollyhocks, phlox, pansies, violas, and sweet peas – all fashionable plants of the time. There is no complete historical record of planting in the garden, but sources show that it has changed over the years, reflecting fashion and fluctuating park budgets. At times the planting has been quite daring: in 1922 the Streatham News reported on Brugmansia plants growing in the White Garden. These tender exotics spent their winters under glass in Battersea. Another snapshot comes from a Gardener’s Chronicle article of 1927 which describes lilies, foxgloves, phloxes, campanulas, grasses, box, violas and an old apple tree – probably a remnant of the orchard that once stocked the fruitbowls of The Rookery itself.

Planting for the future

White gardens are enjoying a resurgence, and many of the plants used in today’s white gardens are modern cultivars of those chosen by the Rookery’s Edwardian gardeners. Some of the plants and ideas under consideration for the White Garden’s redesign might have struck them as novel, but – given the rapid pace of change in their own time – they would no doubt have taken it all in their stride.

Terka Acton

15th February 2016

Rookery Redesign

The Rookery is a magical garden at the top of Streatham Common, just up the road from my home in south London. When SCCoop, the community group managing the garden, appealed for volunteers to help with a redesign of the Rookery’s historic White Garden, I was in. I wrote this piece, published in London Landscapes (the journal of the London Parks and Gardens Trust), about the project, and this article for Common Knowledge, the newsletter of the Friends of Streatham Common. The new White Garden planting is all in now (this photo was taken on one of our planting days) and we’ve started on refreshing areas of planting in the adjacent Old English Garden. It’s already clear that – just as it did when this walled garden first opened to the public – colour will play a big part in our plans for this part of the Rookery.

15th February 2016

Open Orchards

Urban greening is known to play a role in helping us deal with climate change, pollution, and temperature regulation. But – as this people-powered United Kingdom project is proving – making the most of the green spaces in our cities can also yield social benefits. Improving the local environment by planting urban orchards in public spaces can help to strengthen bonds within communities.

The Open Orchard project started in 2014 in West Norwood, south London. With the help of funding from The Open Works, a group of residents came together to plant fruit trees in and around this built-up urban area. Fruit trees are a good choice for cities, since they can be grown on dwarfing rootstocks to make use of the smallest planting space and – once established – need little maintenance.

Read the full article here.