All across London, a city where a back garden is a luxury and allotment waiting lists are endless, locals are adopting unloved, neglected pockets of land and transforming them into inspiring open spaces. “I think it is magical,” says Eamonn Postlethwaite, who found his haven on a modest strip of woodland between council blocks in Bethnal Green.
The university lecturer, 32, lives in Bow and volunteers at the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, a bomb site transformed into a thriving green space complete with a medicine garden, mushroom farm and mini allotments. “It is a very calming place to be,” he says. “We live these incredibly fast-paced lives and having this place where I can go and watch the seasons change slowly gives me one thing in my life that is at a different pace.”
