Community green space shut off for herbicide and housing?

Local residents fight re-development of community garden

Residents of St Ann's Ward are mounting a campaign to prevent a community garden in a protected conservation area from being developed, following threats by the landowner.

Five years ago, a group of local residents cleared a stretch of wasteland off Harringay's Hermitage Road to establish food-growing beds on the derelict site, open for public use. The space has become a popular community garden, allowing people to grow organic fruit and vegetables, providing a peaceful space for locals to enjoy and the gardens have opened up a vital pedestrian route between Hermitage Road and local shops.

This popular shortcut, runs from Hermitage Road through the garden to Sainsburys and Green Lanes on the other side.  Recently, L&Q Housing Association, who own the land, erected a tall fence, totally shutting one side of the site to pedestrian access.  Later, metal signs were concreted into the paths we have built and maintained for the last 5 years saying "Private Land Keep Off".  This, the first communication we have had from the landowner who has neglected the land for decades.  At a meeting with them, L&Q gave the gardeners and volunteers a 30 day ultimatum to remove all materials from the site – a chicken coop, raised beds and mature fruit trees. They plan to spray the entire site with heavy pesticides, before assessing the land for housing development, bringing further densification to the area, and potentially damaging a council-designated Site of Natural Conservation.

The garden, known locally as the Harringay Slopes, is a beautiful green space. Chickens have been kept on the site, there is a composting scheme, fifteen fruit trees – apples, plums, cherries, quinces - are now mature.  Where before there was a monoculture of weeds and litter, there is now a healthy diversity of plants and wildlife. New species of bird and butterfly have gradually begun to return.

A local campaign, the Harringay Slopes Action Group, has been set up to preserve this food-growing and environmental space.  This is in keeping with the wider ecological conservation in the area - Railway Fields, the new Woodberry Wetlands, Parkland Walk etc etc. The group are calling on L&Q Housing Association to rethink their approach to the land there, and allow local people to maintain it as a popular community space and thoroughfare.  

As Chair of the Harringay Slopes Action Group I believe that ambiguous, leftover and semi-wild spaces are disappearing all over London, often to be replaced by new housing developments, often for wealthier people.  More than ever, it is so important to preserve a valuable environmental asset like the gardens, which could be opened up to even wider community use, whilst preserving and improving habitats for wildlife. Haringey has a long heritage of protecting green areas like parks, which are great places to improve peoples' health, provide environmental and cultural education and allow the local population to meet each other and socialise.  We'll be fighting to stop this important green space from becoming a car park in a shiny new residential block.  And we aim to get L&Q to review their decision about the future of this land.

harringayslopes@gmail.com for more information