May 19th, 2024
From Chelsea to Grimsby: Create Streets helps RHS Flower Show garden on its pilgrimage from an acme of opulence to one of England’s most nature deprived neighbourhoods.
For over three years, Create Streets has been working with the community of the East Marsh in Grimsby thanks to the generosity of the Create Streets Foundation, Berkeley Group, Tom Shutes and other kind donors. We are helping neighbours to Green up the Marsh planting trees in schools, parks and streets. So far we have helped plant 120 trees alongside East Marsh United and expert urban forester Russell Horsey.
As part of this wider programme, The Anywhere Courtyard, on show in this year’s Balcony and Container Gardens section at RHS Chelsea, will become a tranquil oasis for rest and respite at Grimsby’s award-winning addiction recovery centre Creative Start.
Designed by first time Chelsea exhibitor Elisabeth Wright-McCalla of Botanical Spaces, the courtyard’s modular design as “place or refuge” means it can be adapted to fit into even the most challenging of urban areas. Its benches contain practical storage, whilst raised beds planted with medicinal herbs and gently scented hardy perennials double up as seatbacks. As she put it, “The need for a calm environment – where people can go to reflect and be in the present – has never been more important.”
The garden will transform an industrial yard at Creative Start’s social space, the Black Gull community venue, into a publicly accessible nature haven, becoming the first green space on the Grimsby Docks.
Creative Start founder, Sam Delaney, commented;
“We’re thrilled to partner with Botanical Spaces and Create Streets on this incredible initiative, benefiting both the recovery community and wider NE Lincs community. As a lived experience recovery organisation, we’re committed to using art and creativity to foster lasting change and provide inspiring, non-clinical therapeutic spaces. Elisabeth’s garden sanctuary embodies everything we wish to offer to the area. On behalf of our community, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to all involved.”
Create Streets Associate Director Eleanor Broad said:
“Greening up our streets is the secret sauce for happy and healthy places. The research is done; the judgement is in: greening up is good for people, prosperity and planet. Streets and squares with more trees and more greenery are consistently associated with happier and healthier people, with cooler streets and with better places. And greening up can be so simple to do: a street tree here, a micro-garden there. Taking The Anywhere Courtyard to green up a corner of the historic quarter in the Port of Grimsby could not be a more superb example of how to improve our villages, towns and cities.“
You can read more about Create Streets’s work ‘greening up’ East Marsh here and more of our policy work on how to make it easier and more natural to ‘green up’ everywhere here.