Central London’s public parks are great. They are well-planned, well-designed and well-used. But the typical London suburban park, in Chris Baines’ great phrase, is ‘a green desert with lollipop trees’. The grass is mown; they trees are over-managed. The people hardly use these green deserts, except for Saturday sport. It is these spaces which make us fear the ‘death of the park’. The Heritage Lottery Fund HLF, however, tries to restore these dreary spaces to their ‘former glory’ ie to their condition in the days when the proletariat could not afford gardens or holidays or cars or doctors. Horniman Gardens could all too easily be like this. But no: it has escaped the curse of standardised municipal management. Instead, it is host to a museum which is managed in tandem with the gardens. So they illustrate some of the ways in which public parks can be revived.
First, you remove them from the day-to-day control of municipal government. Find someone else to do the job: a trust, a community group, a school, a museum, a church, or whatever. But make sure that body only has one garden or park to care for.
Horniman Gardens are managed by a Public Museum and Public Park Trust. It’s a quango – but it shows far more sensitivity to users than what Alistair Campbell would doubtless call ‘a bog standard London park’. The Horniman Trust knows its users.
Second, you make it part of the Chelsea Fringe, even if it is nowhere near Chelsea. Then invite individuals and groups to organise events: story-telling, beer bars, gin bars, theatrical events, plant sales, planted cars, book sales, concerts, folk dancing, folk singing, a dog show – and poetry readings. The Chelsea Fringe has great examples of such events and they really bring people into parks and gardens.
Volunteer programmes are another way of involving the community. They work very well in America. So why shouldn’t they work even better in London? We are a Nation of Gardeners. London is the world’s Garden Capital. But the management of our parks date from the Great Reform Act of 1832 and it’s time for a change. So: let’s convert public parks into community parks!
And – there’s one more thing. We should put qualified landscape architects in charge of our parks. They know how to manage them. So let’s get on with it. We can have new parks for our new lives

At the Chelsea Flower Show, it is a well-accepted principle that ‘a small garden needs a water feature’. This year, I noticed the usual number of ponds but fewer fountains. Could the explanation be that after two very wet years people are fed up to the back teeth with the sound of falling water?
The difference between a pool and a pond is as follows: a pond is ‘a small body of still water of artificial formation, made either by excavating a hollow in the ground or by embanking and damming up a watercourse in a natural hollow’. Pond derives from ‘pound’, as in ‘impounded water’. ‘Pool’ is an old Germanic word of uncertain origin meaning ‘a small body of still or standing water, esp. one of natural formation’. So those rectangular blue-tiled places we use for swimming should be called ‘swimming ponds’ – not pools. And the water bodies on display at Chelsea should be called ‘ponds’. The water in many of the examples on display was tinted black or brown. This makes it more reflective, and hides any under-water pumping equipment, but the water looks as though it has been ejected from a frightened octopus. Steel pools are also popular but, even if made with Corten steel, can be expected to have rust-brown water for many years. Phil Johnson’s Trailfinders Australian Garden won the Best in Show award with one of the most naturalistic (and expensive) water features I have seen at Chelsea. The design idea dates from c1800 but the implementation is modern.