The Great Green Estate

As part of Poplar Green Futures, The Great Green Estate is a project which aims to revitalise underused areas of grass verges, communal gardens and open spaces on our estates.

Working with residents and other key stakeholders, we have developed landscape designs that consider residents’ needs as well as the natural environment.

Design phase: September 2023 to June 2024

• In the design phase, we ran workshops for residents where they learned about food growing, foraging and planting. As a group, we visited Hilldrop Farm and learned good practice techniques for improving biodiversity.
• In spring 2024 we worked with residents to develop proposals to revive spaces on the Lincoln, Teviot and Lansbury North estates. The group identified and shortlisted 9 priority sites to be taken forward, developing landscaping designs and planting ideas for the spaces.  These include natural habitats, planting to support pollinators and areas for seating and signage. on our gardens and grassland areas.
• We fund The Great Green Estate alongside the Mayor of London’s Green and Resilient Spaces Fund. The project is being delivered by landscape architects Farrer Huxley with support from R-Urban Poplar and local illustrator Matt Ponting (Doodling Around).

Delivery phase: June 2024 to April 2025

• We recently secured further funding from the Mayor of London’s Rewild London Fund. This will help to deliver landscaping improvements to four sites on The Great Green Estate programme.
• These four sites are on the Lincoln Estate and are close to Sites of Important Nature Conservation (SINCs) in the area . the sites provide an opportunity to build and extend important local habitats into our estates. This includes working with the Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park to plant native trees and a wildflower meadow in Fairfoot Wood.
• We continue to work with residents from the Great Green Estate design phase and welcome interest from anyone wishing to be involved in the project moving forward. We hope the first set of completed sites will generate further interest and excitement within the community for improving green spaces across the neighbourhood.