Links
- Doorstep Greens
- Greenspace.net Learning Network
- Lambeth Archive imagebank
- More historical images of our patch
- About our neighbours
- Doing the Lambeth Walk
- About Lambeth by Lambeth
- About our neighbours
- How to design a garden
- Locals online
- Eco-Action.org
- Historical images and maps of Kennington (50 pages)
- More local news
- The Vauxhall Society - historical and current info on Kennington
- Who lives where? Land Registry online
- Black Environment Network
- Film-makers in South London
- Arts in Lambeth
- Latest local statistics
Archives
This is a community website for the Friends (and others) of The Lambeth Walk Open Space. The Friends welcome new members whatever their financial or residence status, but local people who use, look at or enjoy our park regularly will get most out of our organisation. Anyone who would like to contribute to the Friends or this blog, please get in touch via the email link (at right, below). We are currently spending nearly £200,000 on the important basics like fence, hedge, play area and path works
Thursday, March 11, 2004
The Lambeth Walk Doorstep Green is a partnership between Lambeth Parks and the Friends of Lambeth Walk Open Space (FoLWOS). It wasn't always that way, as most of you already know (see previous posts).
In late 2003, after six months of planning and intensive consultation with local people and the social organisations that surround our park (supported by the Countryside Agency's Doorstep Green initiative and Greening Vauxhall), FoLWOS briefed landscape architects Nowell/Thomas to draft solutions to the most urgent shortcomings of our park identified through our consultations:
So during 2004 we will be spending the £160,000 or so we have raised so far on improvements designed to fix these specific urgent problems. But like all strong,
living projects, these changes are only the first steps toward meeting an even greater challenge – returning our park to the centre of our local community, which is where it belongs.
We hope the structural improvements – new paths, new lights, new fence / beech hedge boundary treatment, a dog-mess-free kids play area, new planting, signs, seats, litter bins and so on are just the beginning of a process that encourages local adults (whatever their age or physical ability), and especially local children, to see their local park as a good place to play, to rest, or just to enjoy a little bit of nature and being out-of-doors. Not just as a huge patch of not very nice grass and some useful paths on the shortest route to the bus stop. To that end we are applying for significant additional funding to dramatically increase provision for active use of the park by all the groups the park is here for, from our seniors to our very youngest.
If you would like to help FoLWOS put in place the changes that you can see are on the way, please get in touch, join our group or make a donation of your time, energy, ideas or cash.
And if you have ideas about more improvements you would like to see in the future, do let us know what you think. The Lambeth Walk Doorstep Green is here for 25 years at least. That's plenty of time to make our local park an even better place to live close to.
Ian Nicolson
Membership Secretary,
The Friends of Lambeth Walk Open Space
PO Box 43419, London, SE11 6WU
friendsof.lwos@which.net
In late 2003, after six months of planning and intensive consultation with local people and the social organisations that surround our park (supported by the Countryside Agency's Doorstep Green initiative and Greening Vauxhall), FoLWOS briefed landscape architects Nowell/Thomas to draft solutions to the most urgent shortcomings of our park identified through our consultations:
- Too much dog mess, and no waste bins
- No litter bins in the park
- No public seating in the park
- Poor and unsafe-seeming paths
- Ugly, haphazard perimeter treatments
- Poor quality planting and maintenance
- Too many bollards everywhere
- Not enough safe places to play
So during 2004 we will be spending the £160,000 or so we have raised so far on improvements designed to fix these specific urgent problems. But like all strong,
living projects, these changes are only the first steps toward meeting an even greater challenge – returning our park to the centre of our local community, which is where it belongs.
We hope the structural improvements – new paths, new lights, new fence / beech hedge boundary treatment, a dog-mess-free kids play area, new planting, signs, seats, litter bins and so on are just the beginning of a process that encourages local adults (whatever their age or physical ability), and especially local children, to see their local park as a good place to play, to rest, or just to enjoy a little bit of nature and being out-of-doors. Not just as a huge patch of not very nice grass and some useful paths on the shortest route to the bus stop. To that end we are applying for significant additional funding to dramatically increase provision for active use of the park by all the groups the park is here for, from our seniors to our very youngest.
If you would like to help FoLWOS put in place the changes that you can see are on the way, please get in touch, join our group or make a donation of your time, energy, ideas or cash.
And if you have ideas about more improvements you would like to see in the future, do let us know what you think. The Lambeth Walk Doorstep Green is here for 25 years at least. That's plenty of time to make our local park an even better place to live close to.
Ian Nicolson
Membership Secretary,
The Friends of Lambeth Walk Open Space
PO Box 43419, London, SE11 6WU
friendsof.lwos@which.net
