Southeastern give go-ahead for Crofton Park station garden

Lewisham Council officer Sarah Eaglestone writes:

I can report that Southeastern have confirmed they have no objections to our proposals for the use of the Marnock Road / Crofton Park station community garden site (a stretch of wasteland next to Marnock Road and station). They have said it would be fine for us to grow fruit, vegetables and herbs as long as they are in planters to ensure the land is not contaminated. But other flowers and plants can be planted directly into the ground and we can landscape as we see fit and even use the land for community get-together.

There is an accessible water supply and Southeastern will be looking into upgrading the fence along Marnock Road and we will have our own private gate and they will provide a number of keys for designated key holders (the site will only be open on designated days of the week for security agreed by the community gardeners).  The only thing Southeastern wasn't happy about was the garden having a tool shed on site due to fears of a fire or vandalism, but we have already discussed ways around this.

Southeastern have advised that everyone who wants to be a community gardener should sign up together as a group to adopt the station land and we will be running through in detail what a community adopting station land entails at our next community garden meeting. Apparently not many communities in London have done this, but many communities elsewhere in the UK adopt station land,  a primary school has  adopted station land somewhere in the South.

Once we have got the main large square patch of land  by the station transformed into a sizable community garden, Southeastern are very happy for us to work our way down the thin stretch of land adjacent to the platform to transform the whole site.

The next step now is to arrange for Community Payback to do the initial clear up of the site (currently over grown and a victim of fly-tipping), which Sergeant Hawtin is kindly arranging for us. I will arrange with the relevant LBL officer for Glendales to prepare the land for use,  once that is all done,  it's down to local residents  to get gardening!

We have £3,000 of Local Assemblies funding  already approved and allocated to this project for site preparation,  planters, plants, etc. The Community Library has kindly offered to initially be the umbrella organisation to support the community gardeners.

We have our next community garden meeting scheduled for Saturday 27 October 2pm - 3pm, at the Crofton Park Community library.

This is an open meeting for anyone interested in getting involved in the garden. People coming along to the meeting may wish  to take a look  at the site and start to think how they would like the site to look like and what you would like to plant there. So please bring your ideas or even drawings to the meeting so we can start to form a plan for the garden, which should be finally blooming in 2013!