(SID: 22 NOV 2018 - 0821 -- 55895) [ PDF0001 ] 532732 The Gardener 22 2018 Cover - No Lamination

T H E

532732 London GARDENER

OR

The Gardener’s Intelligencer For the Year    

Volume the twenty-second

J o u r n a l o f t h e London Hi oric Parks and Gardens Trust

The London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust Duck Island Cottage, St James’s Park L  

(Price T Pounds, F to Members)

532732 The London Gardener 22 2018 Cover - No Lamination 532732 [ PDF0009 ]

For 2018

Containing

More in Quantity, and greater Variety, than any Book of the Kind and Price.

1. Thomas Square, Honolulu: a ‘London Square’ in the Hawaiian Islands by Monica Kailikapuolono Bacon ...... 11 11. The Fulham Fields by Vanessa Courtney ...... 34 111. Parks for People: gone for good? by The Perambulator ...... 47 1v. Agostino Aglio and Edwardes Square by Julian Mitchell ...... 53 v. A Short History of the Great Vine at Hampton Court by David Lambert ...... 60 v1. The Richardson Evans Memorial Playing Fields in Wimbledon and other First World War Memorial Landscapes by Carrie Cowan ...... 79 vii. Sunlight, Space and Greenery at Golden Lane Estate by Margaret King ...... 87 vii1. Verdancy in the Smoke: Louis Simond’s Impressions of Regency London by Chloe Chard ...... 100

The Index to Volumes i – xxi of The London Gardener is available at www.thelondongardener.org.uk [ PDF0047 ]

Parks for People: gone for good? strength. In 1877 a ‘lawn racket ground’ was Parks for People: gone for good? inalled, then tennis courts, followed by By The Perambulator croquet around 1900. As interest in polo escalated, Hurlingham needed more land for fter twenty-two wonderful years, the another pitch, and for this they leased Heritage Lottery Fund (hlf) has Mulgrave House with its fifteen acres. Broom Aannounced the closure of its Parks for House, which marched with their eaern People programme, the latest incarnation of a boundary, was acquired in 1912. Sir Edwin dedicated fund for public parks that began Lutyens, who had worked on various aspes with the Urban Parks Programme (upp) in of the club, advised on the layout of the 1996. It was a hioric moment when Lord grounds after Broom House was demolished. Rothschild stood on the steps of the Museum The standard wierias of today on the site in Weon Park in Sheffield one snowy could ‘well have started life on the walls of the January morning and announced £50m for old house and ancient lilacs, rare privets, and public parks. It was an unimaginable sum, at a yew date from this time’.19 time when the annual English Heritage Repton’s landscape was altered forever budget for grade i and ii* regiered parks was after the flood of 1928, when the Thames rose £200,000. It transformed the situation not to the very doors of Hurlingham. As a result, only for parks, but was a key part of an embankment was built along the entire transforming the whole funding landscape for length, which effeively blocked out the view heritage. Public benefit was as important as of the river forever. Further dramatic changes heritage benefit; the needs of children and came to Hurlingham after World War ii when young people needed to be addressed, along the two polo grounds were compulsorily with economic and social deprivation, purchased by the for geographical equity, and suainability. No housing and a school, followed by number 1 longer did a site need to be on a national ground being made over to a public park. heritage list to merit funding, and grants Today, the gardening committee of the embraced not only conservation and repair but Hurlingham Club is sensitive to its hiorical new features; the toilets and cafés and play legacy. Specimen trees, oaks, London planes, areas that were essential to the idea of not just tulip trees, limes, plane and horse chenut reoring but regenerating - the term was abound, much as in the past. They strive for coined in the hlf’s annual report for 1996 - the spirit of the country house garden, but are these places. mindful of the social and sporting needs of its In the first year alone the hlf awarded members. The bones of what ‘Capability’ £58m worth of grants to urban parks and over Brown and Humphry Repton did to the the years there have been some wonderful original landscape can just be recognised projes, and London has benefited hugely today, and remain a fitting, and laing legacy from schemes that range from tiny sites like to the two great men. Coram’s Fields to the grandeur of Vioria Park (fig. 32). All the projects have been of direct benefit to the millions who access these parks every day freely, many as a matter of * * * * * * routine. They have been a celebration of all that is wonderful in human life – communal pleasure, tolerance and consideration, fresh air Acknowledgements and flowers, King Lear’s superfluity that makes us human. We should not forget that With thanks to Carrie Starren, the hlf chose to fund parks as a way of Honorary Archivist, The Hurlingham Club diverting criticism that it was too concerned

19. Diana Lecron, A Brief History of the [Hurlingham] Club. n.d., n.p.

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THE LONDON GARDENER or The Gardener’s Intelligencer Vol no. For the year  with elite heritage,1 but whatever the not matter, or have been ‘done’, could not be background, the hlf was the inspiration and worse-timed or further from the truth. well-spring of this renaissance in public parks, Auerity has left parks services worse than with Lord R as a kind of benevolent Pope decimated – cuts not just of 10% but even of Julius ii, the unlikeliest but most vigorous 90% have left them unable to funion defender of the faith. properly, scrambling for ill-conceived solutions The upp survived its first three years and put together with little regard for the long- got a renewal as the Public Parks Initiative, term. There is a huge and shocking and then that too was renewed and parks were discrepancy in the level of cuts to parks given core-business status within hlf, and so services with the worse being in the north continued for those twenty-two years. But the while the Home Counties have the least. end was brutal: no one foresaw it. It seems to Perhaps most damning of all, research by have been the result of a financial crisis within the hlf has revealed that, such is the rate of the hlf, not helped by the downturn in decline resulting from auerity since 2010, by income from Camelot, and also from a 2020 parks will be in a worse state than they downturn in applications. That was not of were in the mid-1990s when hlf began its course the result of ‘the job being done’ but funding.2 That means that despite over £900m rather of the hollowing out of local authority inveed by hlf, central government has parks services. All over the uk, the capacity effeively deroyed the long-term benefits of required to put together a bid to the hlf has that invement. almost entirely vanished as a result of eight So now that the dire warnings about years of auerity and the job-losses it caused. auerity have been ignored, we are now well The end could hardly have come at a and truly on the helter-skelter spiral of decline, worse time. The decision was made, without accelerating each year into the unknown. warning and with particularly crass timing, What do we see? We see Newcale upon one year on from the House of Commons Tyne, having suffered 90% cuts to its parks Select Committee inquiry. This had budget in seven years seeking to transfer its demonrated the huge public concern over parks to a new trust, unwisely encouraged by the future of parks, and its recognition, if no the National Trust and the hlf, on the basis of more, of the importance of parks to people’s just a £9.8m subsidy to end after ten years, physical and mental well-being, to the social as after which the Trust is expeed to run the well as the environmental ecology of towns parks on an entirely self-financing basis. and cities, and even to their economic growth. Without a subantial endowment of the kind The hlf chose to celebrate that anniversary, that supports the two successful parks trus and the faint signs of progress on the part of which are regularly held up as exemplars – government, by pulling the plug on the one Nene Park and Milton Keynes – there will be source of significant funding available to make an inordinate amount of pressure on the new parks fit for those purposes. trust to raise funds annually from events and The hlf will continue to fund parks but commercial aivities. The City has suggeed in competition with other, better-eablished, more money could be made available for an forms of heritage – churches, museums, lied endowment but that it would have to be buildings - and that will mean less money repaid, which defeats the purpose. The available. But the money aside, the signal this Council has been seeking to appoint a chief decision gives that parks are marginal, or do executive since January and it is no surprise to

1. In an interview in 2002, quoted in The Parks Agency, ‘Parks find no takers as yet for what could be a Reborn: a record of the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Urban Parks poisoned chalice. Programme,’ HLF internal report, 2002 (p.6), Anthea Case, then the Director of the HLF, said, ‘There were two drivers. First, HLF put In Briol, in 2017, the Council revealed on a brave face but in 1996 it was still reeling from the controversy plans to make parks ‘co-neutral’– i.e. reduce over its grant to the Churchill papers. In that context, urban parks, as a possibility raised by Lord Rothschild, looked democratic. funding to zero - by 2019. They have now Secondly, in those early days, Lord Rothschild and the Board of (April 2018) been forced to pull back from such Trustees were conscious of being in a very crowded pool with a number of well-established sharks circling, and wanting the HLF’s a disarous plan by the public outcry which money. Parks, on the other hand, appeared to be a pool without such sharks.’ 2. HLF, The State of UK Parks, 2016.

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Parks for People: gone for good?

32. The restored Chinese Pavilion, Victoria Park, Hackney

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THE LONDON GARDENER or The Gardener’s Intelligencer Vol no. For the year 

33. Brockwell Park, ,‘The Great Wall of Brockwell Park goes up ahead of 2018’ Brixton Buzz, 24 May 2018. (Photograph courtesy of Brixton Buzz: http://www.brixtonbuzz.com/)

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Parks for People: gone for good? followed the announcement - proposals to Council over the use of those capital receipts.5 close play areas and introduce advertising into These London councils are however parks were particularly egregious - but are still doing no more than following where the Royal seeking cuts of 75% to be made up by an utterly Parks have led, with their enormous concerts unconvincing mix of increased commercial and Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, which aivity and more reliance on community for many years have effeively prohibited volunteers. public access to the Parade Ground area for In Knowsley, there were, until June this some twelve weeks each year. The Parade year, plans to sell off 10% of the borough’s green Ground has been repaired but we must wait to spaces to create a £40m endowment for a new see the impa of the enormous Barclaycard Knowsley Parks Trust. A new leader has now British Summer Time feival, which will run dropped the idea in the wake of public over two weekends in July, and this year’s protes, but will still need to find funds to Winter Wonderland, which runs for two reverse the proposal to cut the entire £1.3m months. annual budget to zero. The message from the The heavy vehicles required by events eleorate was clear – whatever strategic organisers crush verges and path edges; they analysis is adopted, every park is a local park compa grass and tree roots creating problems about which people feel passionately that will take years to manifest themselves. proteive. The decision represents a welcome Set-up and take-down periods mean areas are resiance to what has been called “neoliberal cordoned off for far longer than just the days dorine’s savage sorting of winners and of an event; and crowds of people leave litter, losers”.3 trample flower beds and make life difficult for Elsewhere, local authorities are flogging local residents and park users (fig. 34). And to their parks harder and harder to create revenue cap it all, the local authority, unless it is very to replace core-funding. Londoners will be savvy about its contracts, ends up with well aware of the outcry at ’s proposal unforeseen cos of repair. to host eight major events each summer in In one week alone I heard of three Brockwell Park.4 After eleven years of trashing alarming threats to public parks around the Vioria Park, the Field Day feival has been country. In Porthkerry Country Park outside given a new home in Brockwell, a park which Barry, Vale of Glamorgan Council is is roughly half the size (fig. 33). In a horrible proposing to lease a subantial part of the core game of musical chairs, the Lovebox feival, to a private company to create a campsite, café against which Brockwell residents had long and play area, involving, it is feared, car proteed, has now moved to Gunnersbury parking, a shower block, office and fencing. Park, where similar local resiance might be The modest but popular Wefield Park in anticipated. Caversham near Reading is threatened by In November, although the Friends of proposals to lease and fence off about a third lost their challenge against of the park to a local academy school as a play Haringey Council over the Wireless Feival, area for its pupils. And in Stratford Park, they did eablish a) that unreasonable Stroud, the Council is proposing to allow an exclusion of the public from part of a park can enormous new building to be built as an be challenged; and b) that as a local authority indoor skate park, ‘the Wembley of holds a park on trust for the public, any money skateparks’. Bizarrely, it is offering the land on raised from events must be reserved for a pepper-corn rent so there is not even the spending on the park and not go into general prospect of income for the park, just evidence funds. They are currently pursuing the of poor decision-making.

3. Kevin Loughran, ‘Parks for Profit: The High Line, Growth 5. https://www.thefriendsoffinsburypark.org.uk/finsbury- Machines, and the Uneven Development of Urban Public Spaces,’ park/finsbury-park-events-haringey-council-in-breach-of-statutory- City & Community 13:1 March 2014, p.51. trust/ 4. http://www.brixtonbuzz.com/2018/05/the-great-wall-of- brockwell-park-goes-up-ahead-of-field-day-2018.

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THE LONDON GARDENER or The Gardener’s Intelligencer Vol no. For the year 

34. ‘: Council spends £140,000 a year to clear up park ‘trashed by hipsters’ Evening Standard, 26 June 2016 (Photograph Gareth Jones)

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