Reclaiming London for communities and biodiversity
Matthew Ponsford, London National Park City Volunteer Ranger
This blog post is part of the ‘Where we live next’ series that examines people-powered environmental sustainability policy solutions by amplifying a range of diverse voices and perspectives in the environmental policy space.
During the past year’s lockdowns, for many homebound Londoners, summertime escapes to traditional parks have been followed by a winter of regimented daily journeys for exercise or groceries, and a new appreciation for any local space — no matter how small — of things that are alive, growing and changing. Spring 2020 could hardly have been a more difficult time for the inaugural team of London National Park City Rangers to set out working together to create a wilder and greener London. But, as lockdown began, it was also a moment when the importance of greening streets was driven home.
A National Park City, as defined by the National Park City Foundation, is “a city that is cared for through both formal and informal means to enhance its living landscape” and does so with “widespread and significant commitment of residents, visitors and decision-makers to act so people, culture and natural processes provide a foundation for better life.” National Park Cities rely on a network of Volunteer Rangers to make this vision a reality. So far in London, the first class of 54 rangers have furthered access to green space by transforming disused land across the capital into greener, healthier growing spaces and mini-parks, and have pioneered eclectic projects from a mental health initiative to launching the London Fungus Network.
Meet the Rangers
Talking to some of the rangers, there is a shared feeling that the experience has shown how drastic improvements in city life do not require large-scale interventions by local leaders or businesses. Instead, they emphasise that it begins with communities being handed ownership of urban space, from tarmacked verges to empty front drives, and providing the resources needed to transform them.
Luke Newcombe and Mar Peláez-Muñoz are two rangers who are leading projects that show what is possible. Since leaving his office job in 2019, Luke Newcombe has built the kind of routine that other Londoners have more recently become used to, as lockdown restrictions have forced many of us to get know the world on our doorstep in fine detail. Newcombe, founder of Harringey-based community gardens GrowN22, doesn’t drive and prefers to walk London’s streets, taking in the seasonal changes of the street trees and hedgerows, and the daily cycles of discarded objects and fly-tipped furniture. Carrying his gardening tools over his shoulder, he spends much of the week on the move between the community gardens and miniature parks he tends across the borough, sometimes collecting a tyre or old bathtub to fashion into a planter or wildlife pond.
Before gardening, Newcombe was a manager dealing with vehicle logistics: “I just had that moment where I thought, I need to get outdoors. That’s where I need to be.” In his work with GrowN22, Newcombe says he already had experience getting dirt under his nails, while making the kind of city he wanted to live in. GrowN22 started out de-paving concrete-covered gardens, but has since built community growing spaces, secured funding from the Mayor of London’s to build Haringey’s first official “parklet”, and created a nature reserve on a piece of derelict land that had been a fly-tipping hotspot for over a decade. During lockdown, he has worked with rangers Charles Linton and Max Lawson to transform Wood Green Library forecourt into a set of four community gardens. “There’s a bit of civic pride” in the roadside plot, says Newcombe, while adding bird and insect biodiversity.
Seizing opportunities
The pandemic has strictly limited the informal get-togethers that were a big part of the rangers’ plans for learning and developing community-led projects. But the group has organised online and both Newcombe and fellow ranger Mar Peláez-Muñoz say they are grateful for the chance to work alongside likeminded rangers, during a time that has so often felt isolating. She says it’s a question of trying to make people realise that we’ll have more resources if we get together than if we act individually.
Newcombe says he’s been lucky with opportunities to take over patches of local council land for greening projects. But, in reality, he is one of many rangers who have lobbied councils and seized opportunities to take over urban terrain and unlock the potential for London’s streets to be radically different.
Peláez-Muñoz, a translator by training, launched Heston Action Group, which works with Hounslow council to develop climate-responsive and greener streets. She is currently studying for a diploma in permaculture with the goal of making a community garden — “with edibles and an orchard, and food forest” — that will be a base of operations for the group.
Green resilience
Both Newcombe and Peláez-Muñoz say they want to see a London where these initiatives become commonplace and the little patches of green we have relied on during lockdown multiply and link up. The rangers are optimistic for a wilder future for Londoners but say that the Park City they foresee would also be better braced for more unpredictable shocks in the future, no matter how severe.
“Obviously, we’ve had COVID, we had Brexit, we had changes in how food transfers around Europe and the UK, and there’s a lot more consciousness about eating local, because at the very least, it’s much healthier,” says Peláez-Muñoz. “If everything else collapses and that’s it, we’ll still have like a community garden where we’ll plant and we can grow our own.”
Find out more about the National Park City Rangers.
