I remember the faded typewriter script of it: the stipulation, dating from 1963, that there should be no pots or plants on the balcony. It was on the lease of my old London flat. I’d spent 15 months sofa-surfing to get it, and at the final hurdle it transpired I couldn’t garden there after all. Rather than wait for the council’s permission to grow things, I moved my containers in anyway. A few months later my doormat was confiscated as a fire risk. I wondered whether my garden would be next.
Perhaps it was lockdown, but somewhere between the weakening of Southwark council’s resolve (or resources) and the determination of my neighbours, my block of flats ended up becoming more rather than less green. Over that strange spring of 2020, they installed planters and pansies, creepers and containers. Soon it was almost as green as the woodland surrounding it. I believe these remain intact from council purges, but a few miles east in Greenwich, residents of the Vanbrugh Park Estate are campaigning to save their pot-bound front gardens after the council began to dismantle them.
The Vanbrugh Park Estate was also built in 1963. I’ve found flats of that era to be well proportioned, not least in their allocation of indoor space to garden. Architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, who also designed outdoor space in central London’s Barbican, wanted Vanburgh Park’s flats to have room outside – to grow, store bicycles or simply sit in the sun.
There are two frustrating ignorances about such actions from councils: one is that they ignore fire safety advice that is actually being adhered to - the Vanbrugh Park Estate campaign highlights how the gardens do not cause a fire risk; the other is the vitality of these container gardens – in both senses of the word. No matter how small, urban gardens are crucial to help build ecosystems amid otherwise lifeless urban environments, and also a fantastic way of building community.
It was his profusion of roses that encouraged me to strike up conversation with my neighbour Terry. He’d been sneaking all manner of plants into council-owned flower beds for decades. When councils hamper the gardens we make, they don’t just take away the flowers but the life that grows up around them.
This may have a lot to do with how we recognise and what we count as gardens. I’ve always maintained that a window box or a balcony can be a garden, because that’s what I started to grow on – and yet people would often ask me when I was going to get “a proper garden”. I would reply that I had one already, and was lucky for it. If we only see plots of land with fences around as legitimate spaces to grow, we vastly limit the potential for much-needed urban greening.
