New community garden in Bow West
I’m honoured to have been involved in setting up a new community garden for Bow West residents. The new garden is specially for residents of the Clarion-owned Ranwell West estate and is located near the Butley Court Community Centre.
What was the trigger for setting up the garden?
Initially, I was approached by Clarion Futures (the community projects side of Clarion) and some local residents who wanted to see food waste composting on the estate. Residents in flats will know that there is currently no food waste collection service for flats in the borough, and many residents don’t like this and want their food waste to be collected separately.
Some of the residents are also really keen gardeners and know how valuable the food waste can be when composted down. What we think of as ‘waste’ is in fact a rich source of nutrients for future food, if it’s composted in the right way.
Food waste recycling research project
An extra dimension to this was that a community campaigner, Geoff Juden, got involved who had commissioned some research from Queen Mary academics interested in attitudes to food waste recycling. The researchers interviewed residents on the estate to understand what they thought about separating and composting their food waste. I and my Green Party team helped local residents door-knocking to meet residents and get them involved in the research.
The community garden idea
While the research was happening, the residents and I were keen to start collecting and composting food waste on the estate and we had more discussions about how to make that happen. I was concerned about a few things – firstly that residents wouldn’t want to separate their food waste, secondly that residents would see the composting place and think it was dirty or attracting vermin.
As a first step, therefore, we decided to start a community garden and have a compost area in the garden which can be used for garden waste and eventually food waste. We thought this system would probably help to get residents used to the idea of composting. When people see it working in practice, we hoped they would be more comfortable with the idea of separating and donating their own food waste.
The community garden development and build
Luckily, Clarion Futures were able to secure funding to design and build the community garden! Over the past year, Clarion futures has been working with residents to design a very attractive garden which residents can use for planting veg, fruit and flowers.
There is also a composting bay which can be used by gardeners and residents to recycle your food waste (please only donate raw food and no dairy or meat). If you are a Ranwell West resident and want a plot, please contact me or Clarion to register your interest.
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