Stella and Yasmin live in sunny south London and like to grow things and encourage others to have a go too. Here’s what they did to encourage their local community to join in caring for a bare plot of land.

There was a bare patch of communal garden near the beginning of our road which was waiting to be planted by the gardening company in charge of all the communal gardens on the estate. It had been bare for a while and once lockdown happened, it was going to be left bare for a lot longer.

Luckily there were far too many hypericum (St John’s Wort) plants in another of the communal gardens, so we decided to transplant them in an effort to turn the bare patch into something more attractive, especially as more residents would now be walking past it rather than driving.

As we were planting, several people stopped to talk to us and we asked them if they would help with watering over the next few weeks whilst the plants got established.

One resident said her grandson would love to look after a plant so we suggested she adopt one and label it.

We put up a sign to encourage more people to do the same and now every time we check there are more labels with all sorts of lovely artwork and we often see neighbours coming and going with watering cans.

We only thought of doing this because we’d read about Tiny Revolutions, normally we’d just get on and do it ourselves. We’ve also been foraging wild garlic and leaving paper bags full on doorsteps along with spare rhubarb from the allotment – in return we’ve had bread and cakes!

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