Bulldozers sweep away the Highbury ‘secret’ garden as homes builders move in

Published: 18th March, 2011
by PETER GRUNER

A “SECRET” wildlife garden uncovered in Highbury was finally dug up by a homes developer this week despite a two-year battle to save the green space.

Angry residents living at the top of nearby flats watched as bulldozers drove onto the former National Children’s Home (now Action for Children charity) land at Highbury Park, smashing disused buildings and flattening the half-acre garden.

The 20-acre housing development site had been surrounded by a ten-foot security screen amid fears that activists might break in and prevent the removal of the garden. 

Resident Caroline Russell said that the security hoarding was covered with “cheerful” stencils depicting wildlife and trees. She added: “Previously we had an overgrown garden and never-built-on grassland, home to foxes and multiple birds and plants. Now it’s just a flattened building site. 

“In one corner of the building site a small fragment of transplanted grass lies pathetically behind a tall wire fence. But it’s no replacement for the precious green lung that has disappeared forever.”

Ms Russell, a Green Party activist, was among a group of residents who discovered the “lost” garden when visiting an exhibition on the site two years ago. 

Former Green councillor Katie Dawson immediately launched a campaign to save the land from development. 

One of London’s leading wildlife experts, Dr Mark Spencer, a botanist with the London Natural History Society, joined the campaign to save the site, a former meadow said to be 140 years old which contained rare and colourful plants.  

The site will provide 145 new affordable homes. Islington Council argued that the need for housing in the borough is greater than that for green space.