St Pauls Community Garden

Location

St Paul's Community Garden, The Parish of St. Paul the Apostle, 60 Park Lane, Tottenham, London, N17 OJR

Brief Project Description

The aims of this project are:

• to make the garden useable for most of the year
• to make the garden accessible to elderly and disabled members of the community and congregation
• to have space for the children
• to have space for quiet time/prayer
• the potential for weddings and christenings to have photos there
• to make the garden visually pleasing for all the residents of the flats instead of an eyesore
• to make sure the garden is a useable resource for the church flower arrangers
• to allow easy maintenance

Amount of funding

£11,000

Start- Completion dates

Sept2002- March 2003

Illustration of what was achieved

St. Pauls RC Church in Tottenham applied for SRB2 funding through Groundwork Hackney to create a Community Garden for the church users, local school and people living in the flats around the church.

£10,000 was granted for the works and Groundwork and St Paul's set to work planning how to get the most out of the money.

Joan Lewis, a member of the congregation introduced Groundwork to Yvonne Matthews, a Chelsea Flower show competitor and landscape designer, who offered to create a design for the garden for free.  Yvonne also agreed to carry out the work at a reduced price, giving much of her time as a volunteer.

Yvonne was also a master at getting garden supplies at knock down prices and with a bit of bartering one supplier agreed lots of price cuts and free delivery if we could supply a pair of Tottenham Hotspur match tickets.  Tottenham Hotspur's Stadium is just across the road from St. Paul's so it seemed a reasonable request but as the match asked for was Leeds V's Tottenham (usually a sell out match) it looked like getting the tickets would be a bit touch and go.  Happily Tottenham Hotspur stepped in with the offer of a free pair of tickets to ensure the garden got its bargain price materials and free delivery thus allowing a top notch Chelsea style garden to be produced at a bargain cost.

St. Paul's Community Garden is a great example of partnership working at its best.  Groundwork would like to say a big thank you to Yvonne Matthews and her work team, Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, all the congregation at St. Pauls, Father Dangerfield and his team and Joan Lewis and the volunteers who helped clear the garden with her.

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This Page was last update: Monday, November 3, 2003 at 12:04:54 PM
This page was originally posted: 6/23/2003; 1:04:52 PM.
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