Floating Gardens, Shad Thames, London Greening affordable housing in the city centre Since 1999, Floating Gardens have grown up on more than thirty houseboats linked by walkways and bridges just a stone’s throw from Tower Bridge in central London. Originally set up by architect Nicholas Lacey in the 1980s the houseboats have occupied the historic Downing Roads commercial moorings just downstream of the bridge. The gardens were created by residents initially led by Elaine Hughes, a former Greenwich landscape architecture graduate.
About 70 people live in the Downings Road moorings, at the foot of luxurious and expensive loft-style apartments in a floating community. The moorings have existed since the first half of the nineteenth century and are one of the Thames’s oldest in continuous use. The plants grow in 40cm-deep metal planters with a growing medium of 50 per cent topsoil and 50 per cent compost. Nearly all kitchen waste is composted in bins on the barges. The drainage on the barges is so good that they need a daily soaking in summer. The dry soil means that trees, including Robinia pseudoacacia, false acacias, do not reach their full potential. During droughts, water is pumped straight from the Thames, yet the salty tidal water has no obvious detrimental effects. The plants include seaside and roofgarden planting which tolerate the desiccating winds on the Thames: waxy, silver-leafed and evergreen plants such as Stipa tenuissima and lavender and Euphorbia amygdaloides robbiae and ferns complemented by apple trees and low box.
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The gardens attract waterfowl. But despite the introduction of stacks of rotting logs to attract bugs, this remains something of an unbalanced ecosystem, because of its isolated island nature. Many of the boats on the moorings are historically significant, and they include barges, lighters, commercial tugs, Humber Keels, freight carriers, and both sail and motor barges from all over Europe. The community practises ‘time banking’, a concept developed by the New Economics Foundation thinktank, which seeks to ‘inspire and demonstrate real economic well-being’. People can earn and spend time credits. For instance, if a neighbour gives you an hour of her time – say, teaching you to knit – she earns a credit which she can ‘spend’ on someone else’s time. In other words, the residents help each other out. It helps them get to know each other and establish a culture of trust.
B