The Story of the Walworth Community Gardening Network 2017-2025
Good stories usually have a beginning, middle, and end. When the idea of telling the story of the WCGN first arose in early 2024, it felt like an end. There hadn’t been any formal meetings in over a year. A decision had been made to close the company, and local charity Pembroke House had been appointed to ‘support the wind down of the formal organisational structure, and a transition to an informal network.’
But what did that really mean? There was a lot of uncertainty. What does an informal network do? Without a central administration, how would anyone know what’s happening? If there was just a whatsapp group and a plant swap once a year - is that still a network? Would WCGN exist?!
Around this time we heard about ‘The Decelerator’. The Decelerator is a free service for civil society organisations that offers tools and hotline support for better organisational endings. Its tag line is “Endings Are Inevitable. Bad Endings Don’t Have To Be”. They aim to equip people with the “knowledge and confidence to approach endings with purpose and care”.
This helped us to realise that whatever the future for WCGN it felt important to recognise the contributions that people had made, and celebrate the value of what had been created. Ideas, like seeds, can sometimes take many years to germinate and take root. WCGN itself grew from earlier attempts by resident groups to unite around a resident-led neighbourhood plan for Elephant & Walworth. We began to ask - what could WCGN most usefully leave available, ready to be picked up and used by those who came next?
The story of the WCGN will be different for everyone who has played a role in the network. Whether you joined a garden visit, attended a training session, swapped a plant, or shared knowledge via the Whatsapp group. It’s not one, but multiple interconnected stories. We hope you find both something you recognise, and something surprising in the stories that have been brought together here, and forgive the inevitable gaps and subjectivities.
Is this a story that is ending? Or just beginning? You decide...
Researcher and writer: Enke Huang
Designer: Belen Díaz Guerra
Editor & Introduction: Richard Galpin
Commissioned by: Pembroke House
Supported by: Eden Tree and the London Community Foundation
Full PDF Download (12.8MB) : https://e-voice.org.uk/wcgn/assets/documents/the-story-of-wcgn-2017-2025
Sample pages:
