Boost for London Sparrows

The sparrow population of London has plummeted in the last 15 years, along with the bird population of the rest of the UK, as a result of increased traffic, paved-over gardens, removal of trees and development of green spaces, leading to a lack of seeds and insects for the sparrows to eat. The RSPB says many chicks are dying in the nest of dehydration or starvation because there are not enough moisture-rich insects for them to eat.

Now the SITA Trust, an environmental trust funded by the government’s landfill tax, has launched a plan to help them recover their numbers. The conservation charity has teamed up with a number of partners across Greater London and allocated £170,000 to run a three-year project to try and provide food-rich habitats for the birds.

Tim Webb, spokesman for the RSPB, said the plan was to sow areas of more than 20 parks in the capital with wild grasses and flowers to provide seeds and attract insects. Each site will be managed using three different planting schemes of grass seed, wildflower meadow and wildlife seed mix. While the main aim of the scheme is to boost sparrow numbers, the project could also encourage butterflies and moths back to the capital and provide food for other birds and bats.

Tim Webb said he was concerned that some people might think the wild areas, which will be in green spaces including Green Park and Kensington Gardens, were not being managed properly. But the patches of long grass were part of a scientific project which would benefit the environment in those areas.

The three-year scheme will run on sites owned by Lee Valley Regional Park Authorrty, the City of London, the Royal Parks Agency, and the London Boroughs of Wandsworth, Islington, Southwark and Sutton.

The 20 parks and organisations taking part in the scheme are:

• Hampstead Heath (City of London)
• Laycock Street (Islington)
• Whittington Park (Islington)
• Paradise Park (Islington)
• Highbury Fields (Islington)
• Burgess Park (Southwark)
• Peckham Rye Park (Southwark)
• Tooting Common (Wandsworth)
• Tottenham Marshes (Lee Valley)
• Waterworks (Lee Valley)

• Leyton Marshes (Lee Valley)
• Green Park (The Royal Parks)
• Kensington Gardens (The Royal Parks)
• Hyde Park (The Royal Parks)
• Primrose Hill (The Royal Parks)
• Perretts Field (Sutton)
• Bedding Park (Sutton)
• St Helier Open Space (Sutton)
• Rose Hill Park East (Sutton)
• Cheam Park (Sutton)

Crystal Palace plan raises park protection issues

Hazelle Jackson writes:

The latest controversy to hit London parks is whether or not part of an historic park should be sold off for luxury housing to fund the restoration of the park. This raises important questions over the protection afforded to public parkland in London and Metropolitan open land in general.

The issue looks likely to come to a head in recent proposals to develop luxury housing on part of Crystal Palace Park as battle lines are drawn up by supporters and opponents of the scheme.

The London Development Agency Masterplan for Crystal Palace Park includes proposals to sell off parkland on the edge of the park to build nearly 200 private luxury homes. Bromley Council approved the LDA 'Masterplan' in December 2008 despite the application’s conflicting with their planning policies and the Mayor's London Plan. Also supporting the plan as the best way forward to restore the park is the Crystal Palace Campaign, whose spokesman Ray Sacks said: "This is the best comprehensive plan since 1854. We want to save the park from decay."

Lined up in opposition are the four neighbouring boroughs and a number of councillors and amenity groups. London Assembly Green member Darren Johnson commented: "By allowing the partial sell-off of Crystal Palace Park to raise funds for regeneration, the mayor has ignored strong local opposition and set a precedent that could threaten all of London's open spaces. It looks like he has chosen to ignore the contradiction of running a competition to enhance London's parks whilst at the same time giving the go-ahead to build over a section of one."

John Payne, chairman of the Crystal Palace Community Association, said: "This is the beginning of the end for this park and parks across the country." The group has been fighting the scheme since plans were first submitted by the LDA in November last year.

The plans also have the support of London Mayor Boris Johnson, who has written to Bromley stating that the proposals would “result in ... a significant benefit to south London". A spokesman for the Mayor said: "The new homes are limited to two sites that have never been part of the formal park, and both have previously been built on. There will be no precedent, as historically Crystal Palace Park has funded its upkeep by selling land for housing on its fringes."

The mayor’s support comes despite a manifesto promise he would protect green spaces, and even individual gardens, from ‘greedy developers’ and generated an angry response from John Payne who said: 'We hoped and expected Mr Johnson to reverse the plans and are shocked by his support for them."

As the proposals for development on Metropolitan Open Land and protected parkland are contrary to policies in Bromley's UDP, this is known as a 'Departure Application' and Bromley must refer it to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). In January the Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears, called in the plans and signalled her intention to hold a public inquiry.

The Masterplan for Crystal Palace Park is by Latz and Partner At the moment work is concentrated on the removal of asbestos from the National Sports Centre in readiness for its use as a training pool for the Olympics. (Check Google for latest update). Latz and Partner have also won the competition for a Masterplan for the Lea River Park which will link the Olympics Park southwards to the river.

Further reading:

• Crystal Palace Park Masterplan
• Crystal Palace Community Association

Gardens Matter

LPGT Chairman Chris Sumner writes:

Amid the committee meetings, emails and deadlines, it is quite easy to lose sight of why we are all in this game, which is because we like and enjoy parks and gardens and think that they matter.

I am interested in history and design and also like plants, and I enjoy gardens at all sorts of levels. It interests me that a plant was first collected in the wild in New England in the seventeenth century, or in the foothills of the Himalayas in the nineteenth; that knowledge for me adds to the appeal of the plant, and the fact that it has been growing happily for hundreds of years and looking at home thousands of miles from its native site increases its romance. That is not to say that 1 like all plants; heathers are fine on Scottish hi I hillsides and Surrey heaths but elsewhere they leave me cold; and while there are many good reasons to visit Wakehurst Place, the prospect of seeing the national collection of skimmias is not for me one of them. Orchids growing on a steep roadside bank in Devon are lovely, but their exotic cousins massed in greenhouses can only impress me without my liking them one bit.

Parks, and the effect on parks of proposed developments, continue to make headlines in the London papers. On 18th February one of the Trust's patrons Hal Moggridge presented the Garden History Society's keynote lecture at the Royal Horticultural Society on Views - Perception and Conservation of Iconic Urban Skylines. Hal gave evidence on behalf of the Royal Parks at the Public Inquiry into the infamous Doon Street proposal (see articles for details) and continues to fight for the application of civilized standards in assessing the impact of tall developments on important city park and river views.

Current threats include the Elizabeth House development (aka "the Three Ugly Sisters") in York Road, Waterloo, which will obtrude into views from the Westminster World Heritage Site, Parliament Square and St James's Park, and the Three Houses Project ("the Breadsticks") at London Bridge. If the photomontages are to be believed, at 250m-high, these will look pretty horrible from nearly everywhere, an outsize three-fingered glove gesturing at London and Londoners. For comparison, SwissRe ("the Gherkin") is 180m high, and has at least the architectural virtue of symmetry.

The financial recession may ensure that some of these schemes won't get built for a while, if ever, but the granting of planning permission sets the marker and creates an inflated site value for the future. It can't make much financial sense at the moment to develop the Jolly Boatman site opposite Hampton Court Palace, where planning permission has now been granted for an over-large and tired-looking neo- Georgian hotel, so the prominent riverside site will very likely continue to be an eyesore for years to come.

At the annual meeting of the Thames Landscape Strategy - Hampton to Kew's at Kew on 11th February, Sir Simon Milton, Deputy Mayor of London for Policy and Planning and adviser to Boris Johnson, gave a generally encouraging speech about the Mayor's attitude to the River Thames, tall buildings and the Strategic View from King Henry's Mound to St Paul's Cathedral; but Boris Johnson's failure to intervene in the cases of Doon Street, the Beetham Tower, and the York Road site does make one wonder whether in practice he will be any more enlightened than his notoriously Philistine predecessor.