Gardening trip with De Beauvoir Estate TRA & De Beauvoir Gardeners

by Councillor James Peters

Yesterday, I invited members of the De Beauvoir Estate tenants and residents' association (or the "TRA") and members of the De Beauvoir Gardeners to visit estate gardening projects in the east of Hackney.

The projects in question are in Clapton Park, in King's Park ward.

The Clapton Park estate is well know for its allotments, vegetable patches, fruit trees and, above all, the poppies that abound in even the smallest spaces across the three estates managed by the local tenants' management organisation.

What led to the visit was an initiative by the De Beauvoir estate TRA to start gardening on the estate, using money from its environmental improvement budget (or "EIB"):

The De Beauvoir Gardeners have been gardening in De Beauvoir for the last 40 years, although not necessarily on the estate.  With that wealth of knowledge and experience, I saw an opportunity for them to lend a hand to the TRA in getting the estate gardening projects up and running. You can find more about the De Beauvoir Gardeners here.

So, I thought it would be a good idea to get the TRA and the De Beauvoir gardeners together in Clapton Park to see things we can do in De Beauvoir.

One of the local councillors, Rebecca Rennison, kindly offered to show us around.  Here we all are:

It was both very sunny and very cold.  (That's Rebecca in the middle and my shadow in the foreground.)

Here are a few more photos of some of the things we saw:

Chairs and a green canopy to enjoy the fruits of the gardeners' labour.

A good example of a green roof, a fruit tree on the right and homes for bees on the side of the shed.

Brackets for hanging baskets, ready for when the weather's better.

Planters looking wintry but ready for new growth come the spring.

More planters, also awaiting warmer weather to spring into life.

Trees can also spruce the place up.

I hope that we all came away with ideas that can be transplanted to the De Beauvoir estate.  I also like to think that we may have started to form useful relationships between the TRA and the De Beauvoir Gardeners to help a gardening project like those shown here to flourish in De Beauvoir.

Ward Forum - Tackling Inequality in Hackney

The De Beauvoir ward forum is taking place on Tuesday, 13 January 2015, at 7pm and we would like to invite all residents of De Beauvoir ward (which stretches from the Regent's canal in the south, north to Balls Pond Road and from its eastern edge on Kingsland Road, west to Southgate Road).

We, as Labour councillors, want to hear your views about how we can ensure that everyone in Hackney benefits from the ever-growing prosperity in the borough.

In 2015, your Council is launching "Hackney: A Place for Everyone", a wide-ranging community engagement programme to hear residents’ views on inequality, cohesion, and the way Hackney is changing.

This follows an announcement, by Hackney's mayor, Jules Pipe, when he told the Council in October 2014:

"There can be no doubt that Hackney is a far better place than it was 10 or 15 years ago – cleaner, safer, and more prosperous. It is a better place to live, to work and to raise a family. But that success has brought with it a whole new set of challenges centred on the widening gap between those at either end of our borough’s social spectrum.

We want to create space for people to share their feelings about the way the borough is changing and to tell us how the change is affecting them, in both positive and negative terms.  

We want people to give us their ideas about how we can promote community cohesion, and protect what is best about Hackney."  

The De Beauvoir ward forum on the 13 January, at 7pm, is part of that process, and we hope very much that local residents will be able to join us at the Rose Lipman Centre (on the corner of De Beauvoir Road and Downham Road).

We will be joined by representatives of the Council's Ways into Work job agency, as well as Council officers from the Hackney 100 apprenticeship scheme, as examples of ways in which the Labour-run Council is trying to improve life for the most socially and economically marginalised in Hackney.  But these are just examples of what your Council can do to make Hackney work for everyone in this borough but we want your views and ideas about what else we can do.


An earlier, borough-wide discussion was arranged at Hackney Town Hall in November 2014, with invited expert speakers.  You can see videos from that well-attended event and download the presentations at this site.