Communal gardens

Over the past months during talks in the gardens i mentioned an article posted in the Guardian: Architects hope to tear down garden fences of England’s future homes. Architects searching for a new way to have a garden, away from the private ones going to communal gardens.

Patrick Usborne, the director of Perpendicular, which oversaw another winning entry using wood panels made from British-only timber, said: “There’s an English perception that owning your castle needs its own land. But if we are to improve community cohesion we need to remove the ubiquitous rear garden and bring together external spaces for the community.”

This idea speaks to me. While i sit in my room i watch outside and see the small private gardens with the hedges and little grassy areas and small sheds. What if this was a communal area with an area for children to play in, a few vegetable beds for growing your own tomatoes, beans and cabbage, an area where you can barbecue with friends or family, a few flower areas with benches where you can sit on your own and read a book.

Even in this article the forces opposing this new direction are strong.

But entrants fear their designs will be resisted by builders determined to stick with existing blueprints for homes. Volume housebuilders are poised to erect hundreds of thousands of new homes to their standard designs on greenfield sites under planning changes announced earlier this month.

I think in the Netherlands there are already new ideas being developed. But most of the houses built are of the same blueprint. What if you want a shared garden space, a house with separate rooms for people living by themselves, houses for families with young children, smaller houses for older people. What if you want to use an app to reserve space in the garden for a certain day. What if you want to share the space outside with other people, and not have your own little tiled house extension.

I love this idea. Hopefully this will be put to good use in the near future.