Homerton community garden wins fifth Green Flag award

A community garden run by a Homerton mental-health charity has been awarded a Green Flag for the fifth year running, as the organisation behind the national scheme warns that access to safe, well-kept parks is increasingly a matter of postcode.

Core Arts Community Garden, tucked behind St Barnabas Church on Homerton High Street, is among a record 2,391 sites across the UK to receive a Green Flag this year, the benchmark standard for parks and green spaces.

The scheme, now in its 30th year, is run by the environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy under contract from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The garden is a project of Core Landscapes, part of Core Arts, a long-established Hackney charity that works with people living with severe and enduring mental illness.

It runs weekly beginners’ and progression gardening classes for its members alongside its work as a public green space, and the site is looked after by members, volunteers and a small staff team.

The garden was officially opened in June 2024, after the site was transformed over the first 18 months from 2022 by around 500 people, partly using plants and materials repurposed from Core Arts’ garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. The main part of the garden is open to the public.

Grown from a Chelsea show garden

Siobhán MacMahon, project director at Core Landscapes, said the charity was “really excited” to win the award for a fifth consecutive year.

“The award is a fantastic way for our members to see the impact on the local area of the hard work, time and energy they put into the garden throughout the year,” she said.

“We see the deep benefits of our gardening classes for Core Arts members every week — members can take time for themselves, relax, develop their skills, and support their local community.”

The garden’s recognition comes as Keep Britain Tidy publishes research pointing to a widening “green divide” across the country.

A YouGov survey of more than 2,000 adults found that people in Britain’s most deprived areas are more than twice as likely to describe their local park as unsafe as those in the most affluent neighbourhoods.

The green divide

Just 27 per cent of people in the most deprived areas said their local park felt safe, against 46 per cent in the least deprived. More than a fifth described their park as run-down, compared with 9 per cent in wealthier areas, and fewer rated their local green space as good.

Priorities diverged sharply too. In the poorest areas, residents most wanted improvements to cleanliness, toilets, safety and maintenance; in affluent communities the emphasis fell on community activities and nature areas, with almost a third saying their park needed no improvement at all.

The charity argues that parks are among the most cost-effective public assets available, citing evidence that every £1 invested delivers more than £7 in wellbeing benefits.

It notes that physical inactivity costs the UK £7.4 billion a year, yet spending on parks has accounted for less than 3 per cent of local authority budgets in recent years.

Paul Todd, Green Flag Award manager at Keep Britain Tidy, said parks were essential to wellbeing, communities and the economy but too often failed to feel safe or welcoming, particularly in deprived areas.

“In an age of rising concern about community cohesion, young people’s wellbeing and time spent online, safe local parks are becoming more important than ever,” he said. “Yet the communities who need them the most are sadly the least likely to have them.”

He said investment in parks was “not a luxury” but a preventative measure that could reduce loneliness and ease pressure on services such as the NHS.

Core Arts Community Garden holds community volunteering sessions on Tuesdays and is open to new volunteers. The garden is behind St Barnabas Church, Homerton High Street, E9 6DJ.