Archway garden-in-a-phone-kiosk just the tip of Gilbert Scott kiosk reuse

Colette Blanchard, a landscape gardener for Islington Council, turned her passion for the much loved Gilbert Scott phone boxes into an imaginative mini-regeneration scheme for Archway.

Colette thinks it’s a shame the old phone boxes are going out of use and is keen to find ways to keep them as part of our street scene. She said "The old phone box is a perfect place to grow plants and flowers. There’s plenty of light and space. I’ve researched the idea of using them for gardens on the internet and can’t so far find any actual schemes in place, so this might be a first.”

Islington Council have so far financed two boxes for Archway. One stands in the middle of the plaza at the base of Archway Tower. The other is on a piece of road reserve flanking the Holloway Road side of the Archway gyratory.

The boxes cost £5,300 from a scrapyard, paid out of the Mayor of London’s Outer London Fund the very same fund that will soon be paying for the work on Green Lanes in Harringay.

A little browsing soon led me to realise that this local scheme is just the tip of the Gilbert Scott kiosk reuse iceberg.

Phone kiosk library

Phone kiosk urban art

Phone kiosk urban art

Mmm, I can see one of these with some sort of treatment on the corner of Duckett's opposite the Queen's Head (RIP).

(Photos reproduced under a Creative Commons licence from eco-artware-notes.com)