Create a community garden in Brockley

Lewisham Council has signed up to the Capital Growth scheme, which aims to get 2,012 new community food growing spaces for London by 2012. For Lewisham that equates to 60 community gardens across the borough.

There is total funding of £75,000 available and small grants of between £200-£1,500 will be made available. The deadline for entries is: 11 January 2010.

Anyone can apply to create one and you can download the how-to guide here - pleasingly, Brockley's community orchard project and the St Saviour's church project are both namechecked.

The catch is, however, that you have to have found a suitable piece of land in the first place. And there's no guide to where those patches may be - in that respect, you're on your own. As the guide says:

So, if you know of a piece of derelict, run-down or underused land in the borough, and think it would benefit from a transformation into a pleasant, public open space, then you should consider starting your own community garden.


It may well be that groups like Brockley Cross Action Group, Transition Brockley, Ladywell Village Improvement Group and the Brockley Society are all over this like a rash already, but please feel free to use this thread to share ideas about possible sites for a community garden. We'd also love to hear from any groups already planning something.

For a while, we've thought that the disused entrance to the higher-level of Brockley Station on Brockley Road would make a good spot for a city garden. That part of the station is never going to be reopened (face it) and it has now been cleared of rubbish. An empty plot could be turned in to a great walled garden and the fences removed. The land will be owned by TfL but they might be happy to let it be used for this purpose.