Fann Street Wildlife Garden

Fann Street Wildlife Garden puzzled me slightly – perhaps my visit was too brief during the Open Squares Weekend in London. However, it was the one garden which left me thinking.

The aim is to create an environment which attracts wildlife and which can be enjoyed and appreciated by the residents of the Barbican. This has been achieved: the area certainly attracts wildlife – birds were singing, and there is a foxhole – but I was less sure about the ‘cottage garden’, and realised that creating a ‘wild’ space in the city is very challenging and a great deal more difficult than it appears. Perhaps ‘wildlife’ is not the best adjective for ‘garden’? Perhaps I associate ‘garden’ with an area which is tightly managed? Perhaps a more accurate description would be ‘Retreat – attractive to wildlife’? How do you combine a ‘cottage garden’ with plants and grasses which are appropriate to a particular environment? There were so many questions in my mind after the visit. Since the garden was started there has been impressive progress, which is shown here, and I am sad that I did not have the chance to see more flowers, but would certainly visit again and envy the Barbican residents their interesting project.