The RHS and MEN Ginnel Garden

A ginnel has many names; often dependent on its location around the UK. Sometimes known as an alleyway or a snicket, it’s a narrow passageway between a row of houses – often an unused space in an urban residential area.

The Ginnel Garden demonstrates how a community can work together to maximise a small area and create a communal green space that caters for all of its residents’ needs. These can include growing fruit and vegetables, or planting to attract pollinators that encourage more biodiversity in the city. Children in Williams’ school gardening club grew the edimentals for the garden.

Everything in the garden is repurposed from fly-tipped rubbish – an old trampoline holds hanging baskets, while a bath is used as a huge planter. Individual areas have the personality of the specific neighbour who tends that patch, but the whole thing works as a cohesive, community space.

The garden will be relocated to Manchester’s Moss Side after RHS Flower Show Tatton Park, and Williams will mentor the residents for the following year to ensure the garden’s continued success.

Key plants: salad crops, agapanthus, petunia, busy lizzies