Chairman’s Comment
Following on from the success of Southwark in the ‘Britain in Bloom’ competition in 2008, where it won a silver medal, the Council is keen to promote Dulwich as a stand alone entry for 2009. As before, assessment is made under three main criteria; public spaces and public buildings, commercial retail areas and residential front gardens. Dulwich does the first one very well, the second adequately but, on front gardens, it does not do so well. While there are some excellent front gardens, walking around Dulwich trying to find a decent group of them for the judges to look at is a depressing experience. Why is this?
Many residents have turned their front gardens over to the car, understandable in many roads, but this does not mean that the rest of the area should look like a rubbish tip. Do we really have to have bins left in front gardens all the time? Can’t recycling boxes and bags be stored somewhere else?
The really depressing thing is the lack of even basic maintenance like weeding, particularly on the street side of front fences - yet the local magazines are full of landscape gardeners advertising for work and there seems to be plenty of gardeners’ vans parked on the roads during the day. What are they all doing? Are they only able to work on back gardens?
Is this a classic illustration of private affluence (the garden at the back) and public squalor (the garden on view at the front). Most of us live in Dulwich because we appreciate its inherent qualities, its rural feel, its trees and its green spaces. Is it too much to ask that we residents make a proactive contribution by making our front gardens look neat and tidy? While no one expects all gardens to be a sea of bedding plants, like the garden in front of College Lodge in Dulwich Park - and the ‘natural’ look is perfectly acceptable as it provides a good base for biodiversity, insects and wild life - whatever the style, they all just need to be cared for.
And residents are not the only culprits, what about the area in the centre of the Village where S G Smith had a petrol station? This is a prime spot yet company does nothing and the Estate seems unable to persuade it to do anything. It should be ashamed.
