Crayford Road Gardeners was started by residents of Crayford Road in 2012.
Crayford Road is a very mixed Victorian street in Islington. Most residents do not have access to their own outdoor space.
The goals are multiple:
1. Enhance community cohesion through shared activities and increased pride-of-place.
2. Provide a healthier local environment for both residents and wildlife by increasing the amount of green.
3. Engage children in gardening activities and learning about growing food.
4. Participate in the London-in-Bloom and Islington-in-Bloom competitions.
The benefits are proving enormous. We have successfully engaged over 40 different residents in the street in all manner of activities from digging holes to planting, pruning, cleaning, watering, and building two benches for the street. The street gardening project is a major talking point in the street and has without doubt added to the positive feelings people associate to their own neighbourhood. We harvested rhubarb, tomatoes, maize, runner beans, apples, damsels and herbs. There has been a notable presence of bees and other pollinators. The Crayford Road Gardeners Greens project aims to, having achieved a lot of engagement, focus on providing specifically for those people that are more resident (elderly, less-able and unemployed) an opportunity to be more active. We aim to do this by with the use of waist high planters (good for elderly and less-able persons) grow more vegetables (greens!). These require both a more intensive gardening activity and are particularly satisfying in their ability to provide a sense of accomplishment.
Crayford Road Gardeners as the registed community association is also used as the vehicle to formally support other goals such as organising the annual street party and currently the efforts by Tufnell Park residents to prevent the demolition of the St George and All Saints church and the planned housing development. You can read more about this (and sign the petition) here:
https://www.change.org/p/the-parochial-chuch-council-of-the-st-george-and-all-saints-church-the-church-of-england-stop-the-current-redevelopment-plans-for-the-st-george-and-all-saints-church
and here:
http://lefoupedalant.tumblr.com/
