lifeisland – Manor Garden Olympic Allotments

REVISITING THE COMMUNITY SHED – installation and event by Thomas Pausz
Opening event: January 28th 2008 6.30 – 9.30
and until February 7th by arrangement with Thomas on 07957374463
Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, SW7 2EU
As part of the Royal College of Art Architecture & Design Interim Show, Thomas Pausz has collaborated with Manor Garden Society plotholders [...]

Paradise is Hell for Plotholders by Sally Scott, published in Hackney Gazette following the first attempted move to the new site on 29th October 07.
Disgruntled allotment holders have been inconvenienced further after equipment was stolen and damaged during their move to make way for the Olympic Games.
Manor Garden Allotments, whose 100-year-old plots in Waterden Road, [...]

From The Guardian, 2 Nov 2007
Samuel and Samantha Clark, the couple behind the London restaurant Moro, grew everything from chard to chilli on their East End allotment. They tell Jon Henley about the joy of growing your own food.

Sam and Sam Clark of Moro

Manor from heaven
For more than a century, the Manor Garden allotments have been a fertile source of fruit and veg for many local families. But if the Olympic planners have their way, the poppies and potatoes will be concreted over to make way for a showcase riverside walkway. Simon Garfield meets the fighting gardeners who [...]

Olympics race to save fish, bats and bees – The Observer – 15 Apr 2007

Fish will be knocked unconscious, newts lured into traps and rare birds given new nests as part of an effort to save wildlife from being crushed by bulldozers working on the London Olympics…
The planner’s propaganda absurdly presented the Olympic site as [...]

‘Allotments promote sustainability and biodiversity, harbour wildlife, bring people together and are beneficial to the nation’s physical and mental health. Manor Garden could be a shining example of all these positive things, if only it were given the reprieve it needs.’
‘Lets not lose the plots’ by Clare Foster (Times Online)

Fool’s Gold – The stories behind the 2012 Olympics
Developers fail to meet evicted gardeners

If they’d been competing in the Olympics, it would have been a case of no-show. The London Development Agency (LDA), which is responsible for the development of the Olympic site, failed to turn up to a meeting it had arranged last Sunday [...]

“Turn right by a scrapyard, right again just beside a bus depot, cross a small bridge and you come to Reg Hawkins’ patch of east London heaven…”
“…Given the immense effort of will expended to bring the Games to London in the first place, against the odds, I cannot believe the Olympic masterplan could not be [...]

Thanks to everyone who has submitted objections to the planning applications and requested more time to view them. Today, George Monbiot comments on the inaccessible documents:
“East Londoners are told the games will be good for them, yet it has been made almost impossible for them to have their say…”
The Guardian

A GOLD MEDAL FOR STUPIDITY
Costs for the London Olympics are reaching lunatic levels – but perhaps the highest price is being paid by a small band of gardeners whose historic allotments needlessly face the bulldozers.