13/08/2024 05:48:03 PM
158. Astey's Row Rock Garden and Canonbury Gardens
Astey's Row Rock Garden is the legacy of the New River Company, set up in 1613 to bring clean water from Hertford to London. The southern end of the New River, where the Garden is, was covered over in the eighteen nineties but the ground was left empty. In 1913 the local authority bought the land to lay out as a public space. The rock garden was opened in 1953. The rock garden was re-landscaped in 1998, and again in 2003.
The Garden is mainly a path surrounded by planting, and the very obvious large stones that have been dotted along the path. It extends into a playground. I am always on guard when I go out with Jack, and I had an interesting exchange with some teenage girls who were giggling at Jack and his delight at the “big lying down swing”. I snapped “Is something funny?” and they, acting all surprised, said there wasn’t. I am saving “perhaps you’d like to share it with the whole class?” for another day. There’s bound to be one.
At the other end of the playground is a gate leading to the New River Path. That takes you back to the main road, but on the other side of the path is another gate, into Canonbury Gardens (not to be mixed up with Canonbury Square Gardens, see post 137). Here, the Manna Project, St Stephen's Church Canonbury, is creating an Edible Forest Garden. Manna is a day centre that supports marginalised, vulnerable and homeless people in the local community, providing a wide range of services including food, laundry, showers and work advice. This garden creation is one of the therapeutic diversionary activities offered to increase well-being and learn new skills, whilst improving the local environment.
The smaller text in the photo above reads “An edible forest garden imitates the ecosystem of a natural British woodland incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. These can be intermixed in a succession of layers to replicate a woodland habitat.”
Judith Field
Astey's Row Rock Garden, Pleasant Place, London N1 2BP