Tag: hometag

Urban Canopy was formed in 2016 when two friends got together to host educational workshops for local schools at Kennington Park, during the restoration of the formal flower garden there. Following the workshops, we were contacted by the schools who were keen to take the learning we had been delivering, and bring it onto the school grounds on a regular basis. Since then, we have been providing interactive and engaging gardening education opportunities for school children across London.

We can work with children and teachers to plan and create inspirational and sustainable gardens tailored to an individual school’s needs, with a view to creating spaces that support delivery of curriculum-based outdoor leaning across the year.

From orchards to wildlife gardens, sensory planting schemes to edible gardens, we engage with the school’s community during the creation of the outdoor educational space, as we have been doing at St. Mark’s CofE school in Kennington for four years now, where we worked with the community to restore the food and wildlife gardens, before developing a programme of regular lessons for students there.

We can also create a programme of after-school gardening clubs, as we have done with St. George’s School in Battersea. Here we also engaged children with weekly curriculum-based lessons, and regularly get the children involved in our other gardening activities in the local area, such as our Sundial Gardens installation for Chelsea Fringe in 2018.

As well as working on site at primary schools, we have experience in creating workshops in other settings, where schools can visit for educational site trips. We’ve hosted workshops at Chiswick House’s Walled Kitchen Garden, at Brixton Windmill, and have recently developed a schools education programme for the gardens at Ruskin Park.

We have worked closely with organisations such as the Healthy Living Platform to develop a programme of outdoor educational play for younger children, aged under four years, at Max Roach Adventure Playground, and have developed a Forest Garden programme to invite pre-nursery aged kids to visit the wildlife garden at St. Mark’s School.

We are always happy to drop by and see your school’s grounds and hear about your needs before developing a tailored proposal for you and your children, so drop us an email on info@urbancanopy.org and we can have a chat about we might be able to help you.

Urban Canopy is a partnership of gardeners and teachers that work with residents to improve green space, develop the community and build skill sets.

We believe that introducing a community gardening scheme to an estate can have many positive impacts for local residents.

Gardening activities offer a great opportunity to bring a diverse range of ages and ethnicities together around a common interest, while the green spaces developed together with the community help to bring a sense of pride and ownership of the local environment.

We have worked with tenant management organisations to improve the environment, and to help build communities on estates across London.
This has included working with residents to develop space as a community garden on Gilesmead Estate in Camberwell, as well as hosting monthly workshops in the garden for the residents, and a similar project on Downs Estate in Hackney.

We have created community orchards and arboretums, on Loughborough Estate in Brixton and on D’Eynsford Estate in Camberwell.

We also run regular gardening clubs where children and adults can develop gardening skills, and volunteer gardening sessions, aimed at improving green space and helping elderly or disabled residents with their gardens. For example, we work with the organisation Edible Avenue SW8 to delivery a weekly volunteer gardening session for residents of Carey Gardens, Savona and Patmore Estates in Battersea, while at the same time hosting an after-school gardening club for children at the local primary school.

Our work on estates always begins with engaging and consulting the community about what they would like to see taking place, before writing a proposal that works for that site and group of residents. If you’d like to speak to us about how we could work with you in future, please get in touch! Email info@urbancanopy.org and we can arrange a site visit.

We’ve had the opportunity over the years to partner with a variety of organisations to design and create horticultural installations that bring people together in their creation, and inspire communities through their messages and outcomes.

Our four-part Sundial Gardens installation on Patmore Estate, which formed a part of the Chelsea Fringe in 2018, inspired children on the estate who participated in the planting, and gave an excuse for residents at different ends of the estate to come together for the launch party and get to know each other.

The following year as part of the Nine Elms Happy Streets Festival, we created a four-part Tea Trail across three estates, where visitors could explore and learn about medicinal plants that could provide healing properties for a wide range of ailments.

We will shortly be announcing the details of our big set-piece installation for 2020, which is currently top-secret, but will be taking place across housing estates in Bermondsey!

Across these projects, we have worked with local authorities, development companies, heritage societies, community and charity organisations, schools, housing management companies and local businesses. If you’ve got an idea for a horticultural installation, or if you’ve got a location and are in need of a professional team who can develop some inspiring ideas, get in touch with us at info@urbancanopy.org and we’ll have a chat about how we can help!