Happier times: me by the gardens of Perronet House

The first sign of trouble was a letter from the council asking me to acknowledge a series of insurance issues and health and safety requirements. Quite rightly, and as I had always assumed, they were making clear I was liable for my risks. Their series of safety tips were sensible and required no change in my gardening techniques or design. But it seemed odd to have received it so long after our previous agreement.

The next rumbling of unrest arrived in the form of a bloated e-mail from a notorious serial complainant who lives in the block - under the emotive and usually irrelevant moniker of “disabilities rights campaigner” she hit newspaper headlines for spewing 3,500 e-mails to Southwark Council in one year and for nearly being ‘gagged’ by them. This time I was caught up in her typing frenzy. She copied me in on a complaint to the council about the supposedly low standards of an interior flowerbed in Perronet House with an aggressive focus on me as the cause. My explanation that this was not a bed I had agreed to regularly maintain, that this was something another resident primarily looked after and my dispute about her horticultural judgement was met with silence from the council but pungent words from the e-mail’s author. When I passed her in our entrance hall she responded to my greeting with the pantomime-like, “You’re finished, you’re finished, you’ll never be gardening here again.” And so a whole new front had opened up. No longer was it just the lumbering bureaucratic Bracchiosaurus of Southwark Council but unfortunately also a poisonous jellyfish-like neighbour clumsily jabbing at me, in what I thought were friendly waters. For her politics are more important than pragmatism: the argument seems to be “it is the state’s job to do the communal gardening inside and outside and volunteers have no rights to do take this over” (even if that will cost everyone more and standards will be lower).

A week later two senior officials from Southwark’s housing department requested a meeting. I had them round to my flat for afternoon tea. With recording equipment on the table tense conversations began. They were very reluctant to detail why the meeting was necessary except that it was in response to complaints. I pressured them to give details of the matter so I could comment on them. They reluctantly explained. It turned out the issues were all matters of poor communication and misunderstanding. I had not realised they wanted written agreement about the insurance and safety matters (which I have now provided) and they had confused a separate matter about leaks in our block’s exterior (triggered by a visit from BBC Gardener’s World TV show) with my voluntary gardening. We then relocated to the gardens and I showed them my work. It was a friendly conversation and one official compared it favourably to his own garden. And yet the parting conclusion was they would still need to review their legal position. They needed to be absolutely sure I could continue. Fair enough. I expected to receive a letter at some point with a conclusion, one that I was prepared to take to court. That letter has not arrived.

Instead, and I am incredulous about this, the equivalent of a big red nuclear button has been pressed by Southwark Council. I have received a bill, as has every other leaseholder in the building. They have reinstated their annual charge at Perronet House for “Grounds Maintenance” (Grounds Maintenance is their chilling description for either total horticultural neglect or low-skilled, bi-annual hacking and mulching by a poorly motivated contractor). Why oh why? Last year they refunded us and assured us future charges would be dropped but now they have reinstated it with no explanation - £45.79 for my flat alone. My optimistic conclusion is that it’s a clerical error, further evidence of Southwark Council’s institutional incompetence and terrible internal communications. They have pressed the red button unaware of the significance of the damage it will inflict on everyone, including their reputation. The pessimistic conclusion is that this marks a return to their insistence that the gardens of Perronet House are theirs to maintain and not for me or any other volunteer to take on. This regressive policy is being implemented by stealth, tucked within a page of far bigger costs and rises in our service charge. I will not buckle from their new bureaucracy and the bill is not a fait à compli.

I shall fight, for my right, to garden.