NPR Radio – Gardens Bulldozed to make way for the 2012 London Olympics

Photo: Jan Stradtmann’s ghostly image of an illuminated Manor Garden allotment shed.

The story will air June 26th on NPR’s Morning Edition.
The story is about the (former) Manor Garden Allotments in East London, which were bulldozed in October, 2007 to make way for the 2012 London Olympics.

“On Thursday, June 26, Hidden Kitchens travels to London to explore the tradition of urban communal garden plots known as allotments. Wedged in between buildings, planted in abandoned open spaces, carved into hillsides, scattered across the city by the hundreds, these plots of open space have been reserved for neighborhood gardening since the industrialization of England when rural people poured into the city.

“This Hidden Kitchen story delves into Manor Garden Allotments, with its more than 100 families—gardeners from Cyprus, Turkey, the east end of London—who once grew vegetables and flowers side by side and shared meals together cooked in a small Turkish kitchen tucked into the garden. With the coming of the 2012 Olympics, the 100-year-old allotment was recently bulldozed to make way for a footpath in the future Olympic Village. The plot holders, some in their seventies, have been relocated to a forlorn, flooded stretch of land near a highway and are workicommunity and the Manor Garden Allotment vision.”

Listen on June 26, 2008.

http://www.npr.org/

www.kitchensisters.org