Letter: Sun Tel bemoans building on gardens, ignores huge losses to car parking

The 20th December Sunday Telegraph carried a large front page story entitled 'Thousands of gardens 'stolen' by developers'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/greenpolitics/6844167/Thousands-of-gardens-stolen-by-developers.html

and followed this up in an editorial which bemoaned the covering 'of areas that were once full of flowers and well-kept lawns with a rash of ugly buildings' and stating that 'Seldom can so much beauty have been destroyed, to so little point.'

There was no mention of the huge loss of garden space to car-parking , despite the negative consequences they highlighted being exactly the same. And one could argue that covering gardens to accomodate excessive numbers of cars is a rather more trivial reason than doing so to create more housing.

Consequently, I sent the following letter to the Sunday Telegraph on 31st December:

SIR - I was surprised to note that neither your article 'Gardens stolen by developers' (20th December) nor the letters on the subject (27th December) raised any concerns about the huge numbers and proportion of front gardens being smothered with paving so as to accomodate multiple car ownership. Nor do the supposedly 'garden-friendly' Conservatives. This is by far the greatest driver of garden loss in my neighbourhood. Walls and hedges are ripped out, and the grass verges driven over. Many gardens have been completely hard-surfaced, even where there is plenty of room to accomodate both cars and plants, and despite permeability legislation, there is still significant rainwater run-off. In my view this is lazy, unimaginative and contemptuous of the green and pleasant street scene which ought to be a prime attraction of suburbia.

Yours sincerely,
Chris Rose
Barnehurst,
Kent
(London Borough of Bexley)

Wet and weak Labour policy doesn't stop the run-off

Labour's policy of requiring planning permission before being able to lay more than 5 sq m of 'impermeable surface' - including for car-parking (see post of 29/7/2009) - was really all about trying to cut run-off in the wake of disastrous floods. But it has also been (wrongly) cited as protecting gardens.

So does it even have the primary intended effect? As far as I can see there are no definitions for, or tests of, permeability. In practice both paving, and the material it is laid on, are heavily compacted with vibrating plate machines. In other cases solid, non-permeable, 'impressed' material is used to give the impression of paving, and a metal grille is placed where this meets the pavement zone. But that seems to me to be against the spirit of the law.

Here are some pictures of run-off (and drainage failure) from pretty flat sites, after just a short period of quite light rain.

Is this amount of paving really necessary ?

Goverment advisors call for greening the built environment

The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, the government's advisor on architecture, urban design and public space has produced a very good document arguing that green infrastructure does not receive anything like the investment or management that goes into grey infrastructure, and that this should change dramatically.

The booklet, 'Grey to Green', downloadable here:

http://www.cabe.org.uk/publications/grey-to-green

is designed to fuel a debate about whether the current imbalance is smart, given the dangers of climate change and the opportunities to improve public health. It also reveals the urgent need for more people, with the right skills, to manage the living landscape of our towns and cities.

According to CABE, 'Grey to Green' provides fresh ideas and evidence, showing how we could design and manage places in radically different ways that would produce a far more pleasant living environment, as well as being more 'future-proof'. Besides the critique of our present situation, it highlights some inspiring 'greening' schemes from around the UK. It will be of interest to anyone involved in greening the built environment, but above all to the people taking decisions about where to commit public money at a local and a national level.


Nature by-pass: this sort of increasingly grey and featureless facade, to much of our supposedly 'green and pleasant' suburbia, runs counter to the kind of future for cities that the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment is calling for.

Garden 'makeovers' bad news for hedgehogs

A steep increase in the number of hedgehogs being brought to sanctuaries this summer has been reported by animal volunteers.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/6299758/Gardening-makeovers-blamed-for-rise-in-orphaned-hedgehogs.html

Dr Toni Bunnell said “The problem now is garden makeovers. They’ve been an unprecedented disaster this year. We are getting lots and lots of mothers and babies disturbed by the bulldozers – the mother can make off but the babies have to be rescued.”

“In the past people have maybe put out a few flowers. Now they are having the whole garden demolished. Everything goes – trees, shrubs, the lot.”

Lorraine Jackson, who runs the Hull Animal Welfare Trust’s Hedgehog Hospital, said: “The makeover programmes on television have a lot to answer for.”


Extreme(ly ugly), wildlife-unfriendly 'makeovers', including for swathes of car-parking, deprive hedgehogs and other species of places to live and feed

RHS and Wildlife Trusts team up on WILDLIFE-FRIENDLY gardening

'Make no mistake, important as nature reserves, national parks and the like unarguably are, the ecological crisis facing us today is above all, a battle for hearts and minds and gardens may well end up being in the front line.' Richard Burkmar 2003

With this in mind, no doubt, the Royal Horticultural Society and the Wildlife Trusts have teamed up to produce an expanded website that encourages wildlife-friendly gardening

http://www.wildaboutgardens.org.uk/index.aspx

There is advice on how to improve gardens for wildlife and a 'jobs for the month' section.

The one disappointing feature is the lack of any reference to the huge loss of garden space - especially front garden space - to hard wildlife-unfriendly surfaces, and no explicit encouragement for its users to reverse any of that. The nearest these partners come to such a revolutionary thought is a suggestion that people might lift a patio paving slab or two to make room for mini gravel gardens.

And whilst there is a section on 'design principles' for wildlife-friendly gardening, I would have liked to have seen a call - especially where a garden is reasonably well planted already - for gardeners (whether long term residents, or newly moved into a property) to take the time to properly investigate what already inhabits their garden and neighbouring ones before making drastic changes. Otherwise they might inadvertently displace something relatively uncommon in the process of trying to encourage something fairly ubiquitous.

London Climate Change Partnership calls for more trees and green roofs as mitigation measures

Four reports are being discussed during a week of events organised by the Government Office for London and the London Climate Change Partnership to help London local government, services providers and businesses to find out how the capital’s climate is going to change, so that we can prepare for extreme weather in the future.

http://www.london.gov.uk/lccp/press/press-29092009.jsp

The ‘Adapting to Climate Change: the role of public procurement’ report concludes that millions of pounds of tax-payers money is being spent on buildings and projects that do not include adaptation measures (such as rainwater harvesting, green roofs and trees to provide summer shading) and consequently they will soon not be fit for purpose. The report shows that current procurement processes can be changed to ensure these are included.

Driving ourselves in the wrong direction: the lack of street trees and the continuing paving over of gardens for car parking will exacerbate the negative effects of climate change. Should this be allowed without a commensurate creation of uncovered ground elsewhere, or the installion of an equivalent surface area of green roofing?

9/9/09: Scientist - 'Disappearing urban gardens could be costing lives'

Dr Ross Cameron a lecturer at the University of Reading UK, and an expert in amenity horticulture, has told the British Science Festival that green urban spaces and gardens play an important role in keeping us sane and fit. They are also useful in cooling inner city temperatures – a problem that will increase with global warming – and also cooling tempers. Studies, he said, had shown that greenery and gardens could reduce crime levels by up to a third, particularly domestic violence levels.

“Creating a concrete jungle does cost lives. It costs lives in terms of depression and encouraging unhealthy lifestyles.”

Full article at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6156068/Garden-grabbing-could-cost-lives.html

Buglife: Minibeast hunt in the garden

Get the kids to take an interest in, and value gardens for their wildlife.

Resources here:

http://www.buglife.org.uk/News/Minibeasthuntinthegarden.htm

But first find a garden .......

1/9/09: London Wildlife Trust - Garden for a Living London campaign

Garden for a Living London

http://www.wildlondon.org.uk/gardening/Home/tabid/384/Default.aspx

The LWT says: 'Let's transform London's three million gardens into a network of mini nature reserves! Pledge to become a wildlife and climate friendly gardener and get your free 'how to' guides.'

I.e., don't do this .......


CONSERVATION STARTS AT HOME. Spot the Sparrow, Bee, Butterfly etc. habitat here. Car parks = sterility = homelessness = death = a further decline in numbers.

More good pro-front garden websites found .....

Have just come across this

http://www.ealingfrontgardens.org.uk/index.htm

To quote from the site:

'This website is about concreting and paving front gardens and the consequences of doing so. It contains detailed research on the extent of front garden surfacing in the London Borough of Ealing, and other information about this increasing problem.

Front gardens disappearing under hard surfacing has reached epidemic proportions in the London Borough of Ealing (as in many other parts of Britain). It has become a serious environmental and social concern.

Their survey found that:

•a quarter of the borough's 74,300 front gardens are completely hard surfaced - no vegetation at all
•a further fifth of front gardens in this borough have nearly all (90-99% of their area) hard surfaced
•well over half of the borough's front gardens have 70% or more of their area under hard surfacing
•the average front garden in the borough has 68% of its area covered in hard surfacing.

The site has a useful set of links to further resources.

Also the Urban Design Alliance:

http://www.udal.org.uk/projects.html

See especially the 'Returning Roads to Residents' link, which charts the processes which have resulted in the creeping and insidious destruction of front gardens.

29/7/09: Planning permission required to concrete gardens

Government legislation announced on 1 October 2008 has made it more difficult for homeowners to pave or concrete over front gardens.

Changes to the General Permitted Development Order mean that the hard surfacing of more than 5 sq m (6 sq yd) of domestic front garden is allowed only when permeable material is used. Use of traditional materials, such as impermeable concrete, now requires planning permission.

See here for a Royal Horticultural Society press release on the subject, and calculations showing that gravel and plants are cheaper options:

http://www.rhs.org.uk/news/FrontGardens.asp

I guess the move was better than nothing, but it's still typical of the weak protection the car-loving Labour Government has given to the environment.

22/7/09: Car-parking gardens + grass verge damage

Grass verge damage in Barnehurst, London Borough of Bexley.

Grass verges are presumably Council property. They are a public amenity which add to the attraction of living in a suburban area. They are certainly maintained by the Council using taxpayer's money. Yet no action appears to be taken over the numerous examples of damage caused by residents widening entranceways - having turned great chunks of their front gardens into sterile car parks - and using parts of verges as driveways.

If a bunch of teenage hoodies came round digging up the verges, leaving unsightly scars, there would no doubt be uproar and calls for police action. But since it's all down to 'respectable' car-drivers, nothing happens.

If a bunch of young people came round after dark and dug up chunks of verge like this there would be calls for action

Unfortunately, it may be better not to take this up with the Council, since I fear the response is more likely to favour cars by chucking tarmac over affected areas than asking offenders to please 'keep off the grass'. At least while the earth's still there, future restoration is fairly straightforward.

Allowing vegetation in the rear half of verges to grow longer, improving wildlife interest and value, would help offset loss of gardens to car parks and might just make them look less inviting to drive over than a flat, frequently mown-to-the-ground surface. Let's have more green and less grey!

20/7/09: Don't want your garden? Let someone else use it.

At a time when allotment demand has suddenly outstripped supply by a huge margin, wouldn't it be better if those who don't want (bits of) their garden offered it to others for more productive use than sterile car-parking?

See here for the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall backed landshare campaign:

http://landshare.channel4.com/

18/7/09: Double-standards on 'garden-grabbing'?

Various politicians - especially Conservative ones - will decry the kind of 'garden-grabbing' where houses are built on back gardens. For a flavour of this see:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23483456-details/Garden-grabbing+boom:+Number+of+homes+built+on+gardens+doubles+in+just+10+years/article.do

But how many of them will stick their heads over the parapet and attack the loss of numerous front gardens to car-parking? Answer : almost none. Why? Presumably because they're scared of alienating their car-addicted clientele.

Where I live in Barnehurst, I would estimate that in excess of 10% of the total garden area (including back gardens) has been lost to concrete and paving for car parking in recent years, over and above the 'original' driveway space that the properties all seem to have had from the outset. In contrast, there is no sign of garden-grabbing for housing - so which is doing more of the damage (loss of wildlife, loss of green character, increased flood risk) they're complaining about?

15/7/09: Toronto acts to reduce heat-island effect

The City of Toronto, Canada, is implementing a green roofs policy to reduce the heat island effect.

This followed a study

http://www.toronto.ca/greenroofs/findings.htm

which found that 'widespread implementation of green roofs in Toronto would provide significant economic benefits to the City, particularly in the areas of stormwater management and reducing the urban heat island (and the energy use associated therewith).'

As noted here, as it gets hotter, people are going to guzzle more electricity to power air-conditioning systems, creating a postive feedback loop by adding to climate change gases.

Not only should we have such a policy here, but there should be a requirement to 'offset' more than a few square metres of paving with new permeable surfaces (i.e. digging some up somewhere else) and/or retro-fitting exiting structures with green roofing.

1/7/09: London temperatures to soar

The Met Office has predicted that temperatures in London will increase in London by more than 3 degrees C by 2080.

To reduce this effect requires less hard surfaces, not more!

30/5/09: Less people thinking of car-parking their gardens (but still way too many ...)

The May issue of the Royal Horticultural Society magazine 'The Garden' reports that a survey by engine manufacturer Briggs and Stratton has found that 'only 15% thought about turning their lawn into a car park - less than half the number in a similar 2004 survey'.

Yes guys, but:

- that's still a lot, especially when they're presumably not amongst the large number who have already done so. In other words, the inexorable trend will continue without serious action.

- the effect may be temporary, and simply linked to the 'recession'.