Play in parks THIS PAGE: Tropics Café at Grow Elephant sells bottles of beer for £3 (left) and peace and quiet at Red Cross Garden (main). OPPOSITE: Strolling through Mint Street Park (top) and a shady spot at St Mary’s Quarter (bottom).
the upheaval. It was always coming, although not so soon – they were originally to have the land until 2018. Now the race is on to find a new Elephant and Castle site, the area where McGann and his Grow Elephant co-founders have run community gardens for six years. McGann, Chris Mead and Richard Reynolds came together in 2011 to establish Mobile Gardeners, a not-for-profit enterprise created to take up the invitation by Southwark Council and Lendlease for local residents to operate a community garden in a portion of this large redevelopment zone. Grow Elephant was another arm of Mobile Gardeners until April 2016 when the two split to allow a change in focus for the founders. “My drive in setting up Mobile Gardeners, and Grow Elephant is that I didn’t have a garden, but wanted one,” says McGann. “We wanted the space to work as not just a garden, but a social space where people could come and have parties, gatherings and events.” Getting a grant in the project’s first year from Southwark-based United St Saviour’s charity – the 634-year-old charity previously known as the Corporation of Wardens – allowed McGann to dedicate two days a week to Grow Elephant. The cafe now allows McGann and one other person to work onsite full time. It is, however, what the garden has given back to local people, that has become the focus. McGann says: “Being part of the garden is free and we provide materials and tools. People pay only for the seeds with a promise they are definitely going to use their plot. We also put on many different events. A lot of the garden is communal and every year we make a communal wild flower garden. We ask that people get involved.” Outside of the garden, Grow Elephant, with Mobile Gardeners, has been helping other local groups – tenant’s associations, 42 issue 17 summer 2017
schools and even a club space – with their landscape, providing design advice and hands-on workshops. Clearly, staying in the area is important. And moving to the Bricklayers’ Arms roundabout, 100 yards from its current location, is the only site which would enable the garden to stay in Elephant and Castle. “The council is very supportive of the proposal,” says McGann. “We are trying to see if we can agree that site – and get Transport for London’s (TfL) agreement, to have a seamless move in the autumn and keep on doing the work locally.” McGann adds it is the last hope for a move within Elephant and Castle. “For the project to continue, we are going to have to look beyond the local area, which would be really sad because we have spent so long working
here and we have made great connections with the local estates and communities. “But, I’d rather take the project to somewhere else than stop doing it because we know how it works, and it’s a good model. I think it could be done in lots of other places – not just by us. There could be a community garden like this in every neighbourhood – something people expect to have rather than being unusual. And that could be a great way forward for people in London.”
BANKSIDE OPEN SPACES TRUST A small group of Bankside residents and workers came together in 2000 to form environmental and volunteering charity, Bankside Open Spaces Trust (BOST). Its mission was to clean up and make safe some 45 individual parks and green spaces