The Aspinall Road Community Garden was started in the Spring of 2020, during Lockdown. It all began with a mural. A local resident - who is an artist and community muralist - painted a large rainbow on the side of the gloomy footbridge which spanned a steep railway cutting in New Cross just south of Nunhead station.

At either end of the footbridge, lay dead ends of the roadway. They were forgotten, fly-tipped spaces. The footbridge had replaced a long-collapsed road bridge and the approach roads at either end were now redundant in their former role. One had some abandoned planters, full of dead weeds and desiccated soil.

As I crossed the footbridge one day, the muralist shared his vision of improving and greening the spaces at either end. I immediately agreed that I had thought the same for many years. Soon a group of us - no more than six - would meet regularly on Sunday mornings and fashion raised beds out of found objects, fill them with donated topsoil and plant them with a very random assortment of plants. We added seating, a bark chip carpet, a micro library and water butts and got a Facebook page and a draft constitution. We changed the gardens name from Rainbow Bridge Garden to Aspinall Road Garden to make it easier to locate. Local councillors, neighbours, the land owner - Network Rail - and the local community-building charity, Bold Vision, were all very well-disposed towards what started as a guerrilla gardening effort and now turning into a permanent local feature. With the trees from the cutting and the bark chip underfoot, it feels like a clearing in the woods. The cutting is a registered Site of Interest for Nature Conservation and a wonderful backdrop to the garden. We hope that the garden will become a permanent feature and continue to develop. We are developing a plan in order to receive the spring with a new set of plants that fulfil our aspirations as a group and hopefully serve our community well as two new spaces for all to enjoy.

We aim to encourage biodiversity, show edibles being grown in a small, urban space and foster community cohesion. We are fundraising to cover the costs of plants, top soil and tools we will be needing for the Spring.

E.E.