It was a fenced-off World War II bomb site that had rewilded, and a team of London artists decided it was the perfect place to grow a medicine garden. The site is in the middle of a social housing complex in the Bethnal Green neighborhood of Tower Hamlets, a London borough that has become the U.K.’s second most densely populated local authority, the basic unit of local government.
For the artists, the hardest part of getting the project off the ground turned out to be finding space. Before they found the old bomb site, they spent 2010 to 2012 in negotiations over another piece of land in Tower Hamlets. But it was “the size of a garage” and involved eight different landowners, said Michael Smythe, the founder of Nomad Projects, an independent art commissioning foundation that focuses on socially relevant public art. Then their funders got antsy.
That’s when one artist reached out to Margaret Cox, the chair of the nearby Teesdale & Hollybush Tenants and Residents Association, which had taken stewardship of the 1-acre parcel, known as Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, in the late 1990s. The association maintained the space by removing litter and planting. Cox, who is 62 now and has lived in the neighborhood since she was 9, said she had been visiting and caring for the land for the past 18 years. She referred to herself as its “mum.”
[For more on this story by Olivia Rosane, go to http://www.yesmagazine.org/peo...cine-garden-20180507]
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