People power at Tatton Park

The RHS and Groundwork champion the spirit of community gardening

Community gardening has seen a boost in interest, with the RHS reporting a 20% rise in It’s Your Neighbourhood and RHS Britain in Bloom groups across the North of England, and as the RHS Flower Show Tatton Park gets set to open, the charity hopes more people will join in and begin to transform their local communities.

This year, the RHS has teamed up with Groundwork at its flower shows to demonstrate the difference that community gardens can have to an area. At the RHS Flower Show Tatton Park, landscape designer and broadcaster Chris Beardshaw will create Urban Oasis, sponsored by M&S, to show visitors how abandoned inner-city alleyways can be turned into productive and safe green havens.

RHS research has revealed how antisocial behaviour plummets when neglected alleyways are managed by the community. A once-overlooked alleyway in Newton Heath, Manchester, for example, left households vulnerable to burglaries. Residents set up an RHS It’s Your Neighbourhood group and turned it into a community area.

“Young people used to congregate here and put graffiti on the walls,” said Newton Heath resident, Celia Binns. “We used to get drug users coming in. It feels safe now.”

Chris Beardshaw said: “Evidence shows that access to green space that is looked after transforms people's lives and plays a fundamental part in drawing communities together; as a consequence, communities see reductions in crime, stress levels and neglect, and an increase in neighbourliness, community spirit, social mobility and economic investment.”

Continuing the spirit of community gardening, elements from Urban Oasis will be reused at projects across the North West, including the Atherton Road community garden in Ellesmere Port, an underused neglected green space, which has been earmarked to be transformed into an area with sensory planting and vegetation to encourage wildlife.