An alternative model of landscape and SuDS maintenance

Tonight (Friday 15th December) on BBC's Gardener's World, a Sustainable Drainage System (SuDS) will feature: Bridget Joyce Square in White City.

This might be the first time SuDS has touched mainstream entertainment which, if it is the case, will be a major milestone.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001td5c

?? Bridget Joyce Square is one of my favourite landscapes to have designed and remains close to my heart.

?? At it's heart it is a community landscape - designed as a social space to promote community cohesion and provide an adventurous, nature-immersive route to school in place of what was a dangerous and polluted, car-dominated pick-up and drop-off.

?? It's also a landscape that creatively manages rainfall to reduce flooding and pollution - integrated nature-based #SuDS and #Raingardens. A #Spongecity landscape.

But this article is about another wonderful and superbly successful aspect of this scheme: maintenance.

And how community maintenance can be a sustainable, cost-effective and multi-beneficial model in lieu of what many in the landscape industry consider a broken council maintenance system.

Broken system

?? As an illustration of how bad council maintenance budgets and skill levels has become (one of many I could tell), we had a tender recently for a retrofit highway raingarden project, for a London Borough.

The project aspiration was for minimal maintenance 'or self-maintaining' raingardens!!

I've not come across this concept before - do we specify a family of elves that come out at night and tend to the plants, silt and litter?!

Hammersmith Community Gardens Association (HCGA)

We met HCGA whilst Bridget Joyce Square was in its 'defects period' in the first year after construction. It's a wonderful community-focussed charity who manage a community garden a stone's throw from the scheme. They manage four community gardens and carry out valuable horticulture-based projects and activities with the local community and schools. Check out their website for more information: https://hcga.org.uk/about/

Our client from London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham (LBHF), George Warren (all round SuDS champion, since GLA's main SuDS guru and now Integrated Water Manager at Anglian Water) began conversation with them at a local community awards ceremony where the project one the first of a number of accolades it has received for its community and environmental benefits.

The intention at the time was for the council highways to take on maintenance of paving including permeable block paving, and their parks team to take on soft landscape maintenance via their framework contractor.

Through the cracks

Fortunately or unfortunately though, at the end of defects maintenance by the build contractor, the project fell through a crack at the council and there was a period of around three months at peak growing season - April, May, June - where no maintenance took place.

We and HCGA both picked this up as weeds were quickly a few feet high and the growing community acceptance, value and sense of ownership nurtured in significant part by the 'broken window' approach that the George had put into action in that first year, was in jeopardy. How quickly a landscape can look neglected and a sense of neglect was the opposite of what this landscape stood for and the last thing the community of White City needed.

Katie Shaw of HCGA recalls how they stepped up for the sake of the local community:

"As this site is close to our largest community garden we walked through Bridget Joyce Square on a regular basis. We saw perennial weeds growing and as time passed and the weeds got bigger we stepped in with a team of corporate volunteers and weeded the beds."

Phone calls were made between ourselves, HCGA, George and his colleagues to find a solution - ideally one that involves HCGA taking on maintenance of the scheme. We were very much in favour of exploring the potential for this and George was enthusiastic too, recalling the selling points of this idea:

Their centre was located within a few hundred metres from the site so they were local (limited travel time)

They were experienced gardeners who were able to do a little and often, which reduced the 'broken window effect' by weeding on a regular basis and not letting it get to a point of looking shabby

They had access to corporate volunteer days where they could bring large groups of 'untrained' labour to undertake those infrequent larger jobs where necessary

The council could in the process support a local charity providing considerable value to the community through their other activities.

There was a provisional budget allocated for maintenance of the project at LBHF. HCGA's quote to maintain the landscape under contract was cheaper than the council's term contractor AND it would deliver all the benefits George summarised above.

LBHF made it happen and it's been a huge success.

Proactive, responsive and local

Being local is a critical factor to the success of this arrangement. This is a charity that is invested in the local community and appreciates the particular value that such a landscape offers that community. They are inherently committed to that landscape succeeding and delivering those benefits to the community for the long-term.

Hammersmith Community Gardens Association is a very small charity and we pride ourselves on being reliable and consistent. The council knew that if we took this on we would be committed to doing a good job!

They also have volunteers from the local community and all this adds up to a proactive and highly-responsive approach to maintenance. As well as regular scheduled maintenance activities such as yearly cutting back and mulching with 25 tonnes every spring, other maintenance issues are noticed and acted on more quickly than conventional arrangements.

We also have a project called 'Get Out There!' where volunteers meet every Friday and go to a different local green space each week, with a staff member. This group have been the main volunteers to maintain the garden.?

Extra attention and clean ups are organised when there are wider public events such as Open House London weekends - and when Fances Tophill and Tom Massey from Gardener's World are coming to film at short notice!

My belief if that this is done with a sense of pride in their work as well as giving the best impression of the community to the wider world.

Communities aren't the answer to that quest for 'self-maintaining' landscapes!!

As George highlights, the council's good-value investment in maintenance of the scheme supports the great work that HCGA do with the local community.

Money is important here. Although this is a form of community maintenance, I believe we should definitely not expect communities to maintain landscapes for free just because we believe those landscapes are beneficial to that community. This isn't the way libraries, roads and bin collections work and it shouldn't be how landscapes and raingardens work either.

Even if there is enthusiasm to maintain landscapes by local communities, this can fade and key active members of the community can leave for various reasons.

On another scheme for a different London borough a local community group expressed an interest in maintaining some of our raingardens - an amazing thing in its own right! I pushed that council to encourage them to form some form of Community Interest Company (CIC) or charity, enter into a contract with that entity, and pay them sensible amounts. This way there is an organisation that is accountable, there is an income to incentivise long-term enthusiasm and pay for organisation, tools, time and other community-supporting activities, and there is a mechanism to measure and maintain a level of performance.

For whatever reason this didn't happen. Enthusiasm waned. The council had no mechanism to monitor performance. The raingardens became neglected and I had to draw it to their attention and suggest we develop a strategy for bringing the raingardens back into good order.

BE WARNED: in this example, that same council engaged with the local community about installing more raingardens nearby and some members of the community referred to the neglected ones and questioned why they would support the council installing more when they look like that?

Growing idea

For Hammersmith Community Garden Association, this was the start of something significant.

It has led us to more maintenance?contracts, mainly in either rain gardens or biodiversity street planting.?

Such is the success of the arrangement for both HCGA and LBHF, that they now look after, under contract, a number of bioretention raingardens that we designed around the same estate, a roof garden and they are currently taking on more council landscapes.

This has enabled them to bring in more corporate volunteers and associated funding, further supporting their wonderful charitable work.

Would HCGA recommend it to similar charities or community groups?

Yes! Although there is a risk of biting off more than you can chew so don't take it on if you cannot keep to the contract requirements. This one works for us as it is so local to us.?

And George Warren?

With the growing desire for the greening of our highways across the country I would love to see some more innovative stewardship models put in place rather than your classic term contractor style contracts which ultimately deliver infrequent visits which usually involve large mowers and not much else. It would be great to see more of these schemes helping to fund local community groups to manage these spaces as it brings far more ownership of that space for that community.

15 minutes of fame

Such is the success story of this community maintenance arrangement with Hammersmith Community Garden Association that I talked myself out of my fifteen minutes of fame by extolling their virtues so successfully that the Gardner's World producers decided interviewing the designer was much too mundane and this was a much more interesting story!

They're right of course.

And I'm so pleased that HCGA are getting the recognition they deserve.

So watch Gardener's World on BBC2 this evening to see Katie from HCGA explain about Bridget Joyce Square Community Rainpark.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001td5c