lifeisland – Manor Garden Olympic Allotments

BBC2 Documentary to be shown 9pm Wednesday 11th March under series banner ‘Building the Olympic Dream’
Tells the stories of three of the evicted groups as we tried to prevent the land we lived on, owned or gardened, from being bought from under our feet by Compulsory Purchase Order. The footage of Manor Garden Allotments [...]

Meanwhile in early July 2008, the Society gathered to party and to put their heads together and work out what had made the Bully Fen original Manor Gardens site function so well. The current sites problems and the aspirations for any future site were all discussed. Every member present spoke, often very movingly. The sense [...]

In May 08, the Society, funded by The Villiers Park Educational Trust, conducted a survey of people in the boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets and Hackney by inserting a flyer in the local papers asking people if they would be interested to have a plot in the Legacy Park. It was time to find out [...]

Heavy rain fell thoughout November 07. It quickly became apparent that the ground at Marsh Lane Field was as it says on the tin – marsh. The allotments, designed and built from scratch, at a cost of £1.3M, by Olympic contractors Birse Civils, had filled up with water, which couldn’t drain away.
On a third of [...]

It’s the beginning of the second growing season sine the community were evicted from the Olympic Site and relocated to Marsh Lane Fields.
Much has happened in the last eighteen months. Those Manor Gardening Society members remaining after some decided they couldn’t start again or wasn’t worth starting again only to be re-relocated in seven years, [...]