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!