North London Food & Culture

Shouldn’t we all have a tidy front garden?

Personally I love recycling. Something about carefully separating the rubbish and sending it back to be turned into something else tickles my latent OCD tendencies

As a rule, most people are reasonably houseproud, aren’t they? Or at least will try and make an effort when guests come over. And the urge to present a well-groomed abode usually stretches to the back garden too. But it often seems to stop at the front door.

All over the UK, certainly not just in Kentish Town, front gardens lie paved over, ignored. And they’ll always be scattered with horrific bins. We must have collectively become oblivious to how terrible this looks. Why else would so many people rock the same downtrodden doorstep look?

Saying that, it’s no easy task to manage a beautiful threshold when the majority of properties contain multiple flats, parking spaces are at a premium and the law requires a daunting approach to our daily detritus disposal.


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This uneasy debate is about to flare up good and proper in Camden over the coming months as the Council prepare to inflict the dreaded wheelie bin upon us in the latest recycling drive. We’ve all seen how such wheeled, bright blue garden sentinels have destroyed once pretty streets elsewhere with a plastic army of stark refuse receptacles, all function and no form.

So on this occasion, the reported outcry is as justified from the conservation areas as it is from the squeezed terraces, already desperately trying to cope with excess bin proliferation.

Personally I love recycling. Something about carefully separating the rubbish and sending it back to be turned into something else tickles my latent OCD tendencies. I’m all for the Council’s efforts to increase recycling levels, although I don’t trust the idea of these mixed boxes. By trying to make it even easier for us to recycle, they actually encourage less thought about the process. If everything is mixed up anyway, why not just shove it all in one black bag and to hell with it?

Far from aesthetic apathy, the reason so many of our front gardens remain a jumble of black bins, green boxes, blue bags, brown caddies and so on, is that waste policy is forever changing. I’ve spent the last 18 months trying to work out how to conceal our own refuse collection eyesore, looking to buy a smallish bin store, but finding everything available designed for vast wheelies.

In fact, the solution looked to be right here in K-Town, where Bartholomew Road’s The Front Yard Company have been making such products alongside their fantastic flowerboxes that double up as bike racks (the ones that are pretty much ubiquitous throughout East London’s hipster hotspots).

A K-Town born design classic

But a phone call last week revealed that their neat BinDock and BoxDock range is all but being discontinued, a victim of the constantly shifting rubbish requirements across the UK’s different councils. Sigh.

So what to do? Well, wheelie bins, storage boxes, or whatever next needs to be accommodated out the front, our lives would improve markedly if people chose to tear up the concrete. This country has around 20.8 million front gardens, of which almost a third have been paved over in recent years. Green pundits have likened this to an area roughly equivalent to 100 Hyde Parks. Other than the wildlife habitat loss, there are the twin environmental evils of increased water run-off (think flooding) and the muggy urban ‘heat island’ (just take a walk across Hampstead Heath on a summer’s evening before re-joining the built up areas to feel this effect).

Many of us city dwellers are not fortunate enough to have a back garden, so why not turn the attention to the front? Forget ‘low maintenance’ paving, spend time elbows deep in your own horticultural creativity. Plant some hardy bushes, maybe a brace of colourful flowery things. Replenish scrappy earth with new soil or just fill up some decent planters and grow a few herbs… hell, why not even some veg?

Happily, the guys at KT’s Front Yard Co are swerving niftily into this area, as boss Duncan Kramer told us. ‘We’ve combined the interests of our two companies – Front Yard Company & Green Roof Shelters – to produce green-roofed bin storage and cycle parking for communal housing, estates, and other larger developments. All our products have an interest in urban biodiversity at their heart; they have deep-substrate green roofs for a wide selection of native and non-native nectar-giving plants, and the walls have a variety of habitats built in.’

Front gardens matter – whatever their size – because they present a first impression. They are our contribution to the street we live in so we should make sure we’re proud of them. I’m not suggesting we get all competitive and ‘in bloom’ about it, but Camden is just the sort of place that could enjoy a lift in civic spirits if we pioneer some eco-love for our front plots, and not just close our eyes and think we’ve done our bit by chucking everything in the same wheelie bin.

Experiences? Opinions? Photos?! Leave ’em all below.


3 thoughts on “Shouldn’t we all have a tidy front garden?”

  1. So agree – the urban streetscape badly needs some TLC and a clearance of clutter, not to mention rubbish.

    And while we’re on the subject, how about a spot of guerrilla gardening – a little bit of planting in the plots of earth (some quite large) around street trees.

    It’s amazing how much passers-by appreciate the sight of dancing daffs in the spring (free bag of bulbs each autumn from Camden Garden Centre). Followed by self-seeded hollyhocks in the summer plus bits and pieces from any over-spilling borders in your garden. I don’t weed over much as many of these plants also look delightful, in moderation. A little light digging to loosen earth, an occasional feed, and some water when necessary also good for the trees.

    In all, not a lot of effort for a whole lot of pleasure.

    But inform the Council if you plan to do this in order to ward off over-zealous street sweepers. Though Council cuts have made street cleaners a rare sighting, these broom-wielding heroes can destroy your fledging efforts if not alerted!

    Maybe Kentishtowner could run a piece on this in the Spring.
    Maybe look at Alma Street and Ryland Road (the patch that inspired mine) to show how good it can look and feel to create a blooming street scene.

  2. As a local gardener with van, I now have to drive to Islington to dump my green waste and pay for it – which has to passed on to the customer, ie you. Green waste is actually one of the easiest to recycle (compost, leaf mould etc) and even sell back to the public. Potentially providing jobs too, where is the joined up thinking here? The concerns re loss of front gardens, or ones with any green in them, is valid and very worrying. Whole streets are becoming either car parks or deluxe bin ports. As car ownership in London is predicted to decline this is plain stupid. Barring a 90 degree turn, an increase in fly-tipping, overgrown gardens and council revenues and an overall decrease in wildlife is inevitable

Leave a Comment

3 thoughts on “Shouldn’t we all have a tidy front garden?”

  1. So agree – the urban streetscape badly needs some TLC and a clearance of clutter, not to mention rubbish.

    And while we’re on the subject, how about a spot of guerrilla gardening – a little bit of planting in the plots of earth (some quite large) around street trees.

    It’s amazing how much passers-by appreciate the sight of dancing daffs in the spring (free bag of bulbs each autumn from Camden Garden Centre). Followed by self-seeded hollyhocks in the summer plus bits and pieces from any over-spilling borders in your garden. I don’t weed over much as many of these plants also look delightful, in moderation. A little light digging to loosen earth, an occasional feed, and some water when necessary also good for the trees.

    In all, not a lot of effort for a whole lot of pleasure.

    But inform the Council if you plan to do this in order to ward off over-zealous street sweepers. Though Council cuts have made street cleaners a rare sighting, these broom-wielding heroes can destroy your fledging efforts if not alerted!

    Maybe Kentishtowner could run a piece on this in the Spring.
    Maybe look at Alma Street and Ryland Road (the patch that inspired mine) to show how good it can look and feel to create a blooming street scene.

  2. As a local gardener with van, I now have to drive to Islington to dump my green waste and pay for it – which has to passed on to the customer, ie you. Green waste is actually one of the easiest to recycle (compost, leaf mould etc) and even sell back to the public. Potentially providing jobs too, where is the joined up thinking here? The concerns re loss of front gardens, or ones with any green in them, is valid and very worrying. Whole streets are becoming either car parks or deluxe bin ports. As car ownership in London is predicted to decline this is plain stupid. Barring a 90 degree turn, an increase in fly-tipping, overgrown gardens and council revenues and an overall decrease in wildlife is inevitable

Leave a Comment

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