{"id":9361,"date":"2013-06-07T04:24:46","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T04:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/?p=9361"},"modified":"2013-06-07T04:24:46","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T04:24:46","slug":"public-parks-should-be-rejuvinated-under-local-community-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/public-parks-should-be-rejuvinated-under-local-community-management\/","title":{"rendered":"&#039;Public parks&#039; should be rejuvinated under local community management"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"775\" height=\"580\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_aOVRUxfDDM\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Central London&#8217;s public parks are great. They are well-planned, well-designed and well-used. But the typical London suburban park, in Chris Baines&#8217; great phrase, is &#8216;a green desert with lollipop trees&#8217;. 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 &#8216;death of the park&#8217;. The Heritage Lottery Fund HLF, however, tries to restore these dreary spaces to their &#8216;former glory&#8217; 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.<br \/>\n<strong>First<\/strong>, 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.<br \/>\nHorniman Gardens are managed by a Public Museum and Public Park Trust. It&#8217;s a quango &#8211; but it shows far more sensitivity to users than what Alistair Campbell would doubtless call &#8216;a bog standard London park&#8217;. The Horniman Trust knows its users.<br \/>\n<strong>Second<\/strong>, you make it part of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/garden_design\/shows_festivals\/chelsea_flower_show\/chelsea_fringe_festival_flowers_gardens_gardening_london_2012\">Chelsea Fringe<\/a>, 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 &#8211; and poetry readings. The Chelsea Fringe has great examples of such events and they really bring people into parks and gardens.<br \/>\nVolunteer programmes are another way of involving the community. They work very well in America. So why shouldn&#8217;t they work even better in London? We are a Nation of Gardeners. London is the world&#8217;s Garden Capital. But the management of our parks date from the Great Reform Act of 1832 and it&#8217;s time for a change. So: let&#8217;s convert public parks into community parks!<br \/>\nAnd &#8211; there&#8217;s one more thing. We should put qualified landscape architects in charge of our parks. They know how to manage them. So let&#8217;s get on with it. We can have new parks for our new lives<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Central London&#8217;s public parks are great. They are well-planned, well-designed and well-used. But the typical London suburban park, in Chris Baines&#8217; great phrase, is &#8216;a green desert with lollipop trees&#8217;. 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9361"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}