The value of those who garden and maintain urban public spaces is too often overlooked. Darryl Moore went looking for some answers at a symposium at the Garden Museum
Following an Urban Greening Symposium held at the Garden Museum in 2025, organiser the Landscape Institute returned for a second session at the same place this February.
Run in partnership with the Peabody Trust and the community interest company (CIC) Care Not Capital, this second gathering was an opportunity to address an issue that is often an elephant in the room during discussions about urban public spaces: who looks after them once they are built, and how?
Aftercare (i.e. maintenance or gardening) is essential for the development of any ‘green’ space, but the importance of it in the public realm is particularly crucial. The money invested in these areas is often from the public purse, so public realm spaces need to function for diverse user groups, provide the health and wellbeing benefits that research and experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic have shown to be so important, as well as provide ecological functions in cities, such as cooling effects, air cleansing, flood mitigation, and habitat provision.
Central to achieving this are gardeners, those people who ensure that the aforementioned needs are actually met but who all too often are taken for granted or are ignored.
Framing discussions around this issue, this symposium delved into the role of the modern gardener in public spaces, looked at the skills they require, and what funding is available to ensure this can be a sustainable career.
Chaired by Dilip Lakhani, Principal Landscape Architect at London University College, the opening session considered the current state of play, including that the financial hardships imposed on local authorities by successive neo-liberal governments has resulted in a situation whereby traditional care structures for ‘green’ spaces no longer function as intended.
Ruth Lin Wong Holmes, Design Principal for Landscape at London Legacy Development Corporation, and Phil Askew, Director of Landscape at Peabody, provided insight into the long-term needs of public projects, referring to the Queen Elizabeth Park and regeneration of the new town Thamesmead respectively.
Different management funding models for build and aftercare were presented, with Beatrice McDermott and Matt Collins from the Garden Museum explaining their approach to local projects, followed by Katie Shaw from Hammersmith Community Gardens Association, who revealed the ways in which it mixes volunteering for health and wellbeing with revenue from grants and corporate team-building events. While these addressed organisational issues, there was a tendency to stray from the issue at hand – the role of professional gardeners – into other areas of community gardening. Volunteering can be important for local groups but can also undermine the value that needs to be accorded to skilled gardeners.
A session by Care Not Capital, the CIC founded by John Little and Susannah Grant, considered what skills a modern gardener should have, and how their CIC helps by offering training in activities overlooked by traditional horticultural education, such as dry stone walling, green roofs, habitat creation, and engaging local residents.
Joe Franklin, Technical Director at WSP, followed up with a look at ways in which money from Biodiversity Net Gain payments could potentially be diverted towards such activities, although it was not clear how his examples of groups involved in habitat creation, based on previous funding models, would be able to do this yet.
A panel discussion between several gardeners was the focal point of the event. Benny Hawksbee’s account of caring for the Eden Garden in Clapham highlighted the often-overlooked hardships in such roles, such as working alone, without a support network, while Chris Fehlhaber, an horticulturist at Chanticleer Garden, stressed the importance of engaging with the public in order to ensure community buy-in and support for projects that he works on in America.
Coralie Thomas, Assistant Head Gardener at Great Dixter, introduced her outreach work in Hastings, while Victoria Holden, Director of Manchester-based Northern Lily, gave her perspective as a community-growing activist on A Right to Grow, requiring local authorities to make it easy for local residents to create community gardens for food and nature on public land, and the importance of regionally devolved funding.
Daven Hastings, from the Parks staff for Hackney Council, presented the impressive work undertaken by his team. It showcased a more sensitive and ecological approach to maintaining high-footfall parks, with techniques for creating habitat that are easily transferable to other councils.
IT WAS CLEAR THAT IT IS THE PEOPLE WHO BOTH MANAGE AND UNDERTAKE THE PHYSICAL CARE OF ‘GREEN’ SPACE WHO ARE IMPORTANT.
During the course of a breakout workshop, case studies of successful approaches to working in the public realm were presented. Julia Boulton, of Beth Chatto’s Gardens, presented the work being done with drought-tolerant planting in sand instead of front lawns at the Chattowood housing estate in Essex by developer Lanswood, which has collaborated with the nursery and gardeners to develop a building strategy that aims to be sustainable and biodiverse.
Oliver Haden, meanwhile, provided insights into the workings of the successful Walworth Garden in London, and Ruth Arnott, Community Gardening Co-ordinator for Southwark Council, showcased the Allotment Expansion Guarantee project, identifying and creating growing spaces for estate residents.
A panel conversation about government policy featured Caroline MacDonald and Maciek Kaszubowski, from the ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and they suggested that the newly launched Pride in Place Programme would help enable local groups to source funding for community landscape and growing projects. While these initiatives should be standard practice, in a volatile political and social climate, long-term success is subject to the vicissitudes of ideologies and party politics, something that was ignored in this conversation.
By contrast, Helen McNally, from The Green Estate CIC in Sheffield, provided an important example of a third-sector model, operating independently but working closely with both public and private sectors.
Unsurprisingly, an overarching model for funding green spaces was not forthcoming on this occasion but a blended approach, mixing national and local grants, philanthropic donors and on-site revenue streams, appears to be a possible future avenue, with social enterprises providing a responsive management model that is agile and adaptable.
The wide range of topics addressed at this symposium meant that at times, there was a drift away from the focus on the centrality of the role of gardeners, towards structures and governance of organisations. It was clear that it is the people who both manage and undertake the physical care of ‘green’ space who are important but making a clearer distinction between each, and the relationships between them, as well as professional and amateur gardening activities, would have been helpful to understand the bigger picture.
Recognising the value of aftercare and investing in skilled gardeners is the surest way of continuing to have the diversity of quality ‘green’ spaces that are wanted and needed, as well as enhancing the ecological benefits they provide. Taking the conversation to landscape architects and local authority managers at the event was a positive step forward, but there is still plenty of work to do, to embed this idea and make it a tangible reality.