East End Park: this is where we live. The blooming Glensdales.

COVEN will go on presenting aspects of our lives here in East End Park, some good, some bad, and today a ray of sunshine in one of the most talked about streets in our neighbourhood.

This is Paul, in front of his house on Glensdale Terrace. He is a keen gardener, and since the street-lined back-to-backs have no gardens, he is creating one, out there on the street.




He is making window boxes, and he grows flowers and vegetables from seed. Now, the gardening bug is spreading on the street. The neighbours like them, and they asked Paul to make window boxes for them, and now the whole street is in bloom.



Where else in Richmond Hill you can find fresh courgettes and beautiful courgette flowers, I wonder? Well, Glensdale Terrace is an unlikely place, but Paul's efforts have proven that it doesn't take too much to transform a place: a lot of imagination and a lot of hard work, but, that's about it.



And yes, he has even managed to find a new use for that piece of old guttering: now it's filled with flowers, brightening up the place.




If you take a walk on the Glensdales these days, you might be surprised by what you will see.

What Paul has done, is proof that you don't necessarily need big stale organisations to do neighbourhood management and regeneration, as it has been the case in our area for a number of years, without much success. But you will need big ideas and a lot of hard work.