What is it? A two-for-the-price-of-one offering this time: Harleyford Road Community Garden is an apparenty shape-shifting (for which read ‘compact but easy to get lost in’), shady nature garden replete with benches, swings and a pond. Bonnington Square Pleasure Garden is a small but perfectly formed green patch fashioned from an old bomb site. The two are connected by a secret passage.

Where is it? Harleyford Road is actually a stretch of the A202 which is one of the busiest arteries of South East London: the Oval is but a strong-armed pitch over over the road, and the upper levels of MI6 are quite visible. The rather chi-chi Bonnington Square is just over the hedge and behind a row of buildings: the two gardens are all but joined at the hip. (And seemingly enjoyed by the hip.)

Why has it tickled our fancy? Because both plots truly are blooming examples of what community effort can do. It was the community (which at that time included garden designer Dan Pearson) that took control of the Bonnington Square space from the council in the 1990s, and it remains community led and fed and watered. The use of ‘Pleasure Gardens’ in the title also offers an affectionate throwback to the original gardens near the site: the Vauxhall Pleaure Gardens. The inclusion of the old waterwheel, and sundry bits of architectural salvage and mosaic, make this a delightful and quirky spot to while a way an hour or so on a sunny July afternoon. Not that Londonist gets two hour lunch breaks or anything.

Nature notes: There is nothing wild or particularly random about these two gardens – they are well maintained and full of well-thought out blooms (including an awful lot of pretty thistles). When we visited there were murmurous bees, and butterflies, and it was all, well, just so. The Harleyford Road garden has just enough overhanging trees and nooks and crannies for one to think that it might perhaps come alive more at night….

via Nature-ist: Harleyford Road and Bonnington Square | Londonist.

To walk into Italo is to see all of the reverence and care of his mothers approach to food married with a relaxed aesthetic that is Charlies trademark. With an emphasis on Italian produce, home-made fresh ravioli and great bunches of herbs sit next to plump tomatoes and crusty fresh bread, while staff bustle behind the counters, making coffee and generously stuffed panini for customers to linger over at an outside table. Its the very picture of bonhomie.

Three years ago, a boarded-up shop occupied this now-thronging corner of the square. Its owner, who had stoically seen the area was fought over by squatters and developers, had retired; the squatters won and created a peaceful network of streets abundant with greenery and a mildly eccentric personality. Into this scene stepped Charlie, with no retail experience but an abiding passion for Italian produce and a fan of the square, after soaking up the atmosphere from the Bonnington Café opposite. He, with his friend Luigi – whose own family had closed their deli not far away – decided to create their own shop. “I have a very strong dislike of expensive food shops and that whole Borough Market thing – the effect where quality translates into high prices and exclusivity,” says Charlie now. “People can feel excluded from the food revolution going on.”They dont at Italo. The shop stocks essentials and store-cupboard basics unusual and good-quality brands, often Italian, along with wine, Rococo chocolates owner Chantal Coady was once a Bonnington activist and treats including Gelato Delight ice-creams – worth a detour alone.Sadly, one item no longer in stock is Arabellas home-made terrine. “I was making two a week, which was fun, and they were very popular,” she recalls. “But it was quite tedious after the hundredth.” Lucky visitors, however, may spot her on one of her occasional visits to her sons shop.

Also a semi-regular fixture at Charlies shop is his son Frank, 24. Frank is the wild-haired, youngest of the clan, and his zest for life and what his brother Jackson calls “enormous charm, enthusiasm and grit” make him an asset to the familys operations, which he helps in the long gap between his bars opening months of July to September.

via Boxer uprising: How three generations of one family have changed the way we think about food – Features, Food & Drink – The Independent.

In the early ’80s Bonnington Square, only minutes from Vauxhall Bridge, was almost entirely inhabited by squatters. The film, telling the story of this urban community, revisits the inhabitants that created its bohemian setting. A utopian story of successful communal living, it stresses the idea of cohabitation based on teamwork. The use of animated decoupage of drawings and archive photos creates a video collage that relates well to the artists whose story it was in a warm and inviting way. This film was the best in the entire series.

via London International Documentary Festival 2011 – Invisible City | Blog | littlewhitelies.co.uk.

In the early 1980s a large number of properties in Bonnington Square, Vauxhall, were acquired for demolition by the then Inner London Education Authority in advance of proposals to build a new school on the site. They were left empty and would have become derelict but for the intervention of a group of people who could see how they could be brought back into use on a temporary basis

They formed a housing co-op and negotiated with ILEA which eventually  agreed to lease the properties to South London Family Housing Association, which handed over the management to the co-op. The co-op did up the houses, transformed the area and even opened a community café.

Years later plans for the school were eventually dropped and of course the properties had been saved. Today, there are various forms of tenure in the Square ranging from tenants to shared owners and even owners, but the amazing thing is that it was saved from dereliction and has gone on to provide a much sought after place to live.

It’s a brilliant example  of how buildings can be preserved, money can be saved, people can be housed and how the environment can be enhanced!.

Funded by grants and local sponsorship, the garden includes a water wheel and  lush, sub-tropical planting. Widely reported in the media, the Pleasure Garden is today regarded as one of the finest community gardens in London.

via Bonnington Square – London | Self Help Housing.

What’s going for it?
If you believe what you read in the property pages (I wouldn’t), Vauxhall and Nine Elms are where all the cool young daddios are. There’s still a cluster of nightclubs hunkered under the viaducts, and the gay village remains thriving. But now the swanky apartments have moved in, for how long? To cap it all work begins soon on America’s new fortress – sorry, embassy – complete with moat. Vauxhall is not for the faint-hearted. Still, all its hideousness equals good value, especially for its location, by the Thames, opposite Tate Britain. And hunt behind the roaring roads and you’ll find secret nooks of peace: Vauxhall Park, the grand terraces of Fentiman Road, Oval cricket ground, the Portuguese delis of South Lambeth Road, and the little community utopia of Bonnington Square, proof that even in the harshest of habitats, life can thrive.
The case against
Less a place, more a circle of hell. An unrelenting urban experience. Thundering roads as wide as the ocean. Trains overhead. Viaducts beneath. Blades of grass and trees rare as hens’ teeth – those nine elms are long gone. Patches can be unsafe after dark, even with MI6 in the ‘hood. New development’s not much improved it: the incomparably ugly St George’s Wharf will be in your eye sockets every day.
Well connected?
Tremendously. Vauxhall is on the Victoria line (zone one), and has trains to Waterloo and Clapham Junction (both five mins, every three/four minutes) and farther south. Super bus station, too.
Schools
Primaries a mixed bag: Wyvil, Ashmole, St Mark’s CofE and St Anne’s Catholic all “good” says Ofsted. Secondaries better: Archbishop Tenison’s “good”, Lilian Baylis “good” with “outstanding” features.
via The Guardian