I'm constantly amazed and hugely impressed by the work people put in to their community spaces around London. It puts my own garden efforts to shame.
In the last week I've visited an inspiring allotment site where the imagination of the allotment holders add magic to what had once been a brownfield site. It's now full of wildlife, flowers, fruit and veg. I also heard about a community who lost their orchard to development but are carving out new green spaces where wildlife is once again showing signs of a recovery.
I'm never sure what I find more inspiring, whether it's the conservation side of things or the fact that a bunch of people got together and worked damn hard to create fantastic shared places. The combination of these two factors, where people and nature come together, make these spaces really exciting for me. If you make space for it, nature will come billowing in; slowly at first but the pace soon quickens.
I still haven't lifted most of the concrete slabs we inherited in out garden, but the new hedge, trees and nectar rich wild flowers are drawing in birds you rarely see. I have my woodpeckers and jays and now, in the last week, my partner's spotted yellowhammers too.
I don't want to give a false impression though. All is not rosy in London's green spaces and gardens. We're still losing a range of species. Whether you blame development or climate change one thing's for sure. You can normally trace the cause back to human action.
The 2009 revised version of the 2002 Birds of Conservation Concern is out this week and is expected to show an increase in the number of species included in the red (most threatened) list. Look out for it on our webpages. Common London species such as house sparrow and starling are already on that list. With the present financial crisis, it' s never been quite so important to invest in conservation. We're losing bits of nature, add you voice to ours to demand faster and better action from our policy-makers.
King Henry's Walk and Leabank Square are typical of people doing excellent things, but they're in the minority. Let's make it the norm. If you've got a good thing going-on in a communal space, share details with me to build a network of sites across London offering practical examples of schemes that work.