Community Gardens

Developing underused East London sites for positive mental health through horticulture.

Historically Core Landscapes has utilised temporary ‘meanwhile’ sites to create vibrant, active, green spaces for positive mental health and community wellbeing, while addressing the climate and ecological emergencies we are facing.
Now we are firmly rooted in Hackney in sites around and close to the Core Arts centre.

Core Landscapes works at 2 ends of the growing spectrum nurturing 4 garden areas;

• Core Arts Community Garden behind St Barnabas church
• Our hot, west facing, exposed, roof-top garden
• Our darker garage garden (under the roof garden) and
• Core Arts’ sheltered members garden with mature shrubs and trees

As well as the street planting all along Wardle Street, 60m long meadow strip and community orchard in nearby Homerton Grove. The wide range of gardens and green spaces give students and volunteers a multitude of opportunities to explore a wide range of plants to widen plant knowledge and knowhow, including food growing, wildlife gardening, community orcharding, pond plants, herbs and ornamentals.

Our gardens enable people to meet others in a safe space and learn about all forms of horticulture in a relaxed and supportive environment to benefit mental health and wellbeing. This helps to break down stigma around mental ill health promoting recovery and opportunity. We work with people of all ages, backgrounds and experiences and have links with numerous community-based organisations and referral routes that engage with the project in lots of different ways wherever we are based.

Propagation, plant maintenance, landscaping and construction are a large part of our project and offer a range of opportunities to our volunteers and beginner gardeners. The project is anchored around our capacity to propagate the plants that source our gardens, other local community green-spaces, and selling our plants to the public. We advocate organic gardening without the use of harmful pesticides and insecticides – aiming to create spaces that promote positive mental and physical health, encourage wildlife and mitigate against the climate and ecological emergencies we are facing – utilising water harvesting, solar energy and composting wherever we are.

Opening hours:
Core Arts Community Garden open 24/7
Core Arts Members’ Garden open Tues – Fridays 10am – 5pm
Meadow and community orchard open during park hours
Roof Garden: tours by appointment and Eventbrite bookings
Wardle Street Planting: open 24/7

Contact: nmercer@corearts.co.uk or 07585 770 868 or garden@corearts.co.uk