How would we cope if we went back to the austerity measures of the 1940s and 50s? I'm sitting here typing on my laptop having uploaded photos from my digital camera and at the same time texting my friends (I'm a lady who can multi-task!). I've just been pottering about in the garden feeling pretty smugly virtuous that I've got a glut of blueberries and that I'll probably turn my late season tomatoes into green tomato chutney. I've been saving my seeds, taking cuttings and using boxes as plant containers. And yet i know that i wouldn't be able to cope without my laptop or my phone. The public funding cuts and the talks of austerity measures have been washing over me and I've been able to selectively ignore what's going on. Of course, as a public sector worker I'm fully aware of the pressures that are going to come our way but the reality hasn't fully hit yet. Every area is doing things differently and Croydon has got there first. Many of the third sector projects they fund have been cut. When i say many i mean out of 48 only 6 have funding. That's quite a difference. The knock on effect on employment figures will be staggering let alone the effects on the statutory services left.
As we all know I often have fantasies of unilaterally taking charge and implementing radical social justice plans (you will in time hear all about my 'hamster wheel' idea). But on this occasion I'm not sure what I would do. I'd like to think I'd encourage households to be more self-sufficient in terms of food production and enable individuals to reclaim municipally planted land around them for their personal cultivation. This is what my housemates and i have done outside our flat.
However, there's something else that would need tackling - the uniformity we have come to expect from our food.
If I'm totally honest my food growing efforts this year have been rather paltry - so far only five of my tomatoes have turned red. And I have blamed this for my reluctance to eat any of it. But I also wonder if I've been groomed by the supermarkets to only accept 'perfect' fruit and veg. I love watching my salads grow but this year have felt strangely odd about cutting and eating them. Watching the courgette plants grow got me so excited but the strange round thing that one of them produced sent me into a spin of consternation. What should i do with it?? Obviously I couldn't discard the offering of this lovely plant but the beast looked grotesque and quite clearly wasn't meant for human consumption. In the end i took it to my cousin's BBQ and hoped she might have some good ideas for it. To my knowledge it hasn't been used but as I reflect on this i feel a little sad that a perfectly good vegetable has been rejected purely because it didn't look like something from Sainsbury's.
I hope that my horticultural endeavours with my neighbours will help me overcome my pickiness and that we will have the chance to sit down together and enjoy a feast of mis-shapen vegetables...
How do you react when someone knocks on your door in the early evening? You got in about forty five minutes ago and the door bell rings. You look through the eye hole and see some girl in tee-shirt and jeans holding a bit of paper. She's not smart enough for Jehova's Witness but on the other hand the local paper just gets posted through the letter box. Do you answer or do hope she'll stop leaning on the door bell and go away?
Normally, I'm expecting the person who happens to knock on my door so when its unexpected I'm already suspicious. Its hard to get into this building and with layers of doors to get through to even get to my front door I know that this door knocker is on the hard sell. Or its the postman.
My neighbours are not too different from me. So when I went knocking on doors to talk about my community gardening idea they were suspicious. They opened their doors after undoing five dead locks and regarded me from behind the door. It was clear I'd interrutped important chores and as my spiel about gardening went on this vibe became louder. After a while I started to hope that the doors wouldn't be opened. I started to feel that this was a silly frivolous idea; who would want to leave their cosy flat to follow me to the mud and the rain?
Suddenly a door opened and the listener's face went from closed frown to beaming smile. She had been living here ten years and no one had ever done anything like this she said. She had been trying to grow things on her balcony but really missed her garden in South Norwood. She would love to be part of this crazy scheme (my words not hers, by the way).
With that injection of enthusiasm i continued to disturb my neighbours with renewed vigour. Only two futher people answered their doors in response - one had English as a second language and had trouble understanding why we would want to did up a church yard. I got all flustered and ended up shoving my leaflet at him and pointing to the email address. At one door the response came from the dog. The bark was so loud I prayed the door wasn't going to be opened by the owner. It stayed closed thankfully. As i carefully posted my leaflet through the letter box it ripped through as the dog defended its terretory from papyral attack.
I returned to the sanctuary of my flat and opened a bottle of beer. All i had to do was hope that three or four people would see my leaflets and posters and get in touch...
My lovely neighbour Agnes has just been over. She's about as excited as me about getting this project up and running. I first chatted to her a few months ago when i was off work with shingles and had nothing better to do than add more plants to my tiny patch of reclaimed Housing Association land outside my flat. I should mention here that i have a small addiction problem. Well its not that small but I don't think it really hurts anybody.... OK my name is Helen Clarke and I'm addicted to plants. I cannot sit in the garden without taking cuttings to create new plants. I cannot pass a plant on sale without immediately reaching for my wallet and buying it. And i certainly could not let a week of perfect sunshine go when i was effectively quarrantined without doing something in the garden. But back to Agnes - i met her when we were both taking advantage of the sudden onset of summer and she had about 70 or 80 tomato plants outside her flat.
I'd been keeping an eye on that flat in the hope of meeting the gardener as i knew this would be a person i could connect with. Halstead Close Estate has been pretty barren on the meeting the neighbours front. Having lived in all sorts of places in the past i'd found housing estates to be the friendliest and the easiest to get to know people. The Ocean Estate in Stepney seems to come with a health and safety warning from all the journalists who write about it but i found it to be the most community spirited place i'd lived in. I quickly got to know the lads who hung around the entrance of the block and was on first name terms with all the women on my floor and a few of the others within a few months. By the summer i was on plant and seed swapping terms Sayeeda and her friends. Plants, it seems, can overcome linguistic and cultural barriers better than a Babel Fish.
So when i saw Agnes tending to her 80 tomato plants and attempting to pot them all on i knew she'd be a new friend. This is a mammoth task by the way an i'm not sure i'd be able to give all plants the attention they deserve if i had 80. But Agnes is a force of nature. We got chatting and the kids came out to join us and she was most enthusiastic for a Community Garden.
When i did some door knocking the other evening she was one of the few who answered the door without having to undo 5 dead locks. Six children popped out from the living room and wanted to exactly what i wanted and whether i wanted to join in their games - i regretfully declined - and i realised that Agnes was the true mothering kind looking after 4 other children as well as her own two. Not to mention her 70 children outside!
I wonder if Agnes will come door knocking with me next week...
So some months ago i conceived the idea to create a lovely green space in central Croydon, where i live, that could be used by me and my neighbours. By use i mean design, dig, plant and grow things in. This was going to be a proper community green space - not one controlled by the local council and maintained by some landscaping company that employed people who couldn't even prune a hebe.
If you don't know Croydon it's fair to say that its not very green. In fact what it lacks in green it more than makes up for in shops! If you've a talent for spending money then this is the place to compete in the Shopping Olympics. But being a resident here, the grit of the concrete can wear you down. In winter there is nothing to break the constant grey and in summer the hard surfaces cry out for a bit Eden-style softening. Don't get me wrong i love Croydon: the trains run all through the night; I have three large shopping malls two minutes from my door; and the fifty police swarming around Surrey Street and the High Street every Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights are a source of... comfort.
But back to the alchemy of turning concrete to vegetation. The view from my bedroom window is one of a large multi-storey carpark. Ugly.
I had visions of lush green growing on the top floor open to the skies and flowing down the sides. I could see fresh fruit and vegetable being produced and eaten by shiny happy, people. I even had ideas of using the left over green waste from Surrey Street Market in a large composter and then selling the subsequent black gold to locals. I survived the winter snows with these small fantasies until a friend of mine put me in touch with Mikey.
Mikey has a keen interest in community gardening projects and bee keeping on the roof of Festival Hall. Genius! Who comes up with the idea of bees on the South Bank... Only a hippy. Mikey is doing his PhD on setting up community gardens and is involved up to his eye balls in a good ten other projects, but for some reason he has a soft spot for Croydon and has provided me with a lot of inspiration and support. We agreed that although Surrey Street car park would be a fun location isn't wasn't exactly practical. I hadn't really added the details of getting topsoil up there in my little fantasy let alone watering it or dealing with the considerably stronger winds at that level. I was easily persuaded to look at different locations where the soil was already in place and the water easier to source.
Behind this delightful shopping parade is a real gem:
You can see Mikey to the right.
This has the potential to be a great site - very central and easily accessible; protected on all sides by buildings; and currently really ugly - it would be a great feeling to bring idea of Eden to this sad and forgotten corner. On the down side its got no soil and potentially problematic access to water. I'm learning!
These flower beds in the shopping area off Katherine Street have the potential as future sites but for now don't quite fulfil my itchy need for the outdoors with the earth beneath my feet.
At the end of Church Street is, quite astoundingly, a church and rumour has it that Rev looks kindly on green fingered projects and could be amenable to a bunch of Halstead Close residents making a mess of his grass in the name of horticulture. I'm yet to contact the magical Rev, but i've high hopes as he's a man of God and therefore should love the people and love nature...
I've also yet to have a band of gardeners but that's a mere detail.
