What do you know about the Greening Grey Britain initiative? Well I knew nothing either till a few days ago when I happened across it on the Chelsea Flower Show website. There I was at home messing about online when I decided to check out Chelsea to see what design delights it has in store for us this year. Up it popped and I thought, Jaysus these lads are playing my song.
Essentially it’s all about harnessing the power of the greening of public space to heal, increase happiness and provide environmental benefits. Viewers of River Cottage on Channel Four would be familiar with an initiative started by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall a few years ago wherein unused pieces of land are deployed by the community for the organic growing of food. Landshare he called it and it was, and still is, by all accounts a huge success. But this is slightly different.
I have maintained for a long time that the piss poor standard of our public spaces contributes significantly to unhappiness. I don’t think there is much science required to prove this thesis, on an instinctive level I think even the most hardened of hearts would concede that it’s quite obvious. The high unplastered, unpainted walls around our housing estates, the worship of the motor car and the lengths to which we go to facilitate it to the detriment of the pedestrian, the person. Add to that the downright lack of imagination, originality or insight in how common spaces are put together and it seems to me you are creating the ideal environment for the propagation of anti social sentiment.
Evidently they have the same problem across the water because here is a movement that is seeking to address it. The Greening Grey Britain initiative is tied to a programme called RHS vision and the RHS, being the engine behind the Chelsea flower show, have enlisted well known horticulturist and designer Ann Marie Powell to design and build a Show Garden on the subject at this year’s show.
According to the Greening Grey Britain website “Gardens play a crucial role in urban and suburban areas, and potentially will become even more important in the future as our climate changes. From helping protect us against flooding and extremes of temperature, to supporting wildlife and helping gardeners to be healthy, gardens can provide an amazing range of benefits.
The phrase ‘greening’ simply means growing plants wherever possible in towns and cities. Each individual may only have a small garden but, together, the amount of green space we look after really adds up – it’s about 25% of the land in most cities. We really can make a difference by ensuring that every available space in our front and back garden contains planting”
The benefits which they cite include: improved air cooling making hot weather conditions more bearable in towns and cities, insulation of buildings by vegetation, improved air quality, storm water mitigation which helps to reduce flooding, habitat sources for wildlife, improved general health and well being for people who garden more.
It advocates a general appreciation of all the things that gardening and greening can do for us; physical, psychological and environmental. It could be as easy as planting a climber against a dull block wall. The benefits are exponential. There is also mention of considering the material we use to pave the surrounds of our houses and driveways. Why do we unconsciously use hideous tarmacadam which is not only soulless but is proven to contribute to uncontrollable storm water run- off and flooding. The initiative encourages us to think more about choices such as this with regard to visual appeal for the wider community and environmental consequences.
Dysfunctional, dull, soulless, unimaginative public space is a problem across the whole western world. I have mentioned a project in which I was involved whose focus was North Carolina in the United States, I have repeatedly mentioned the stagnation of our own suburban environments here in Co. Kildare and the launching of this campaign attests to the extent of the issue in the U.K.
We don’t like to think so but we follow Britain’s lead in most things, let’s not stop now. Greening Grey Ireland or better again Green for ’16.
You know it makes sense.
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