Apple Trees at Railway Stations
I was very excited when I discovered that my new corner of London had a Transition initiative. I’d been interested in the movement for some time, and loved the focus on community participation and meeting local needs. I’ve been involved with environmental movements in the past and found the top-down organisation and constant lobbying of MPs who just weren’t interested a bit depressing. Also, I’m convinced that local resilience is key to tackling climate change and resource depletion, and Transition has the scope to allow different places to use their own strengths and address their own challenges.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for London and other big cities is the lack of land to grow food. Sure, we’ll probably always need to truck in things like wheat, but you can grow a surprising variety and quantity of fruit, veg and salads in a small space with a bit of thought. And travelling around London, I’m always seeing abandoned and unloved patches of ground and thinking, ‘I wish that was a community garden!’ The tricky part is finding out who owns it, convincing them it would be a much better idea to turn it into allotments than build flats all over it, and then finding people to turn up and do the digging.
Some keen-eyed and dedicated people at Transition Finsbury Park (TFP) had found just such an unloved plot at a nearby train station and the station staff were really enthusiastic about our suggestion to turn it into a mini-orchard. They’re giving us some money to buy trees, BTCV lent us some tools and this weekend a bunch of us turned out to clear lots of brambles and buddleia (some of which are being rehomed!). Some of the stumps were a bit stubborn, but through the creative use of forks, mattocks, brute strength, jumping up and down and sheer bloody determination, we got them all out!!
When we started it looked like this:
This was part-way through:
My camera then died, but for photos of what it looked like after the second work session (and action shots!) and more info on this project and other TFP projects, check out our website and or look up the TFP group on Facebook.
