The Privilege of the Garden — After a Summer of Heatwaves, Access to Outdoor Space Isn't Just a Perk, It's a "Public Health Issue"

Gardens might technically be 'outside' of the house, but they're undoubtedly a vital extension of it. And, as the UK only just begins to recover from its hottest summer in history — a season marked by soaring temperatures, drought, and wildfires across western and southern Europe — our bond with the outdoors is fundamentally shifting. Green spaces are rapidly emerging as the protagonists of a global revolution we can and should no longer ignore.

With the ability to heal, repair, and nourish, gardens can provide solutions for many of our maladies — from health epidemics and social divides to the climate crisis. Although often treated as an apolitical escape, gardening is becoming a powerful tool for environmental activism, inclusivity, and community organization in the modern world.

For some, that realization of the importance of the garden came during COVID-19, when are world became more limited to our personal spaces and a shortage of food in grocery aisles made growing your own seem like a sensible solution. Watching plant life grow and change also felt like an antidote to lockdown-enforced monotony. In their book The Garden Against Time, Olivia Laing writes: "I was exhausted by the perpetual, agonised now of the news... I wanted to move into a different understanding of time: the kind of time that moves in spirals or cycles, pulsing between rot and fertility, light and darkness."

It is a sentiment that, I am sure, resonates with most of us even today. Aerial images of the unprecedented dryness that turned entire slices of the world hay-gold over the past few months are still vividly impressed in our minds, alongside those of the destructive wall of water and mud that, triggered by the collapse of a melting glacier, tragically took the lives of at least 1,287 people at a remote Nepal-China border crossing on August 26. If Laing was right, and gardening could help people find new balance in the bleakest times while also encouraging us to preserve what lies outside, then we should know where to seek fresh comfort this autumn. For too many of us, though, a garden remains an out-of-reach luxury, not a given right.

Gardener and activist Colin Stewart knows that all too well. He spent 2020 caretaking the grounds of Cambridge Botanical Gardens, where a plethora of colorful blossoms greeted him daily from the windows of his cottage.

"I was under strict instructions to maintain plants that preserved human and animal life, which essentially equated with plants kept in the glasshouse, and the activity was limited to watering," he says of his duties in that role. This meant that parts of the garden which were previously mowed regularly filled up with wildflowers like cowslips and red campions — "something incredibly beautiful to wake up to every morning."

Colin looks back fondly on those months because now that he is based in London, despite spending his days tending private gardens for a living, he has no access to a garden himself.

In temporary rental accommodations, gardens can help tenants feel at home; caring for plants or creating a green space can ground you, injecting a familiar atmosphere into a place that would otherwise be rather anonymous. Yet it's precisely in cities like London — where a feeling of groundedness is most needed — that many young people still lack the opportunity to spend time in gardens, whether private or shared with others.

According to GOV.UK's England Biodiversity Indicators (People and Nature Survey), in 2020/21, 92% of respondents based in the country reported owning, sharing, or having access to private or communal outdoor space — including balconies, patios, allotments, and terraces, as well as actual gardens — versus London's 79%. This remained steady through to 2024.

Although the vast majority of people currently benefit from some personal or shared outdoor space, access is unevenly distributed: a 2014-2019 Natural England study found that Black people in England were nearly four times less likely as White people to have access to outdoor space at home (37% vs. 10%), and that people in semi-skilled or unskilled manual jobs, casual work, or unemployment were almost three times as likely to be without a garden as those in managerial or professional occupations (20% vs. 7%).

There's also growing evidence linking this lack of access to a rise in chronic non-communicable diseases such as obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancers in urbanized populations. These illnesses disproportionately impact lower socioeconomic and non-White members of society.

The consequences were starkly evident during the pandemic, which registered worse clinical outcomes for infections in these demographics. Access to a garden or green space, then, isn't simply a perk or a pleasant addition to a home: it's a public health issue. Over the years, though, it has increasingly become a privilege.

Gardens and outdoor space didn't stop being a widely enjoyed feature of everyday life overnight. Parliamentary Enclosure Acts, which intensified from the 18th century (with roots in earlier informal medieval and Tudor enclosure), privatized a fifth of the formerly open land of fields and commons in England, stripping those who needed it most of the ability to grow their own food. The Allotments Act 1908 tried to reverse this, creating a legal obligation to provide residents with land to grow their own produce.

Although the law remains in place today, the appetite for green space has meant that waiting lists can span a generation. Luckily, in recent years, smaller organizations, charities, and individuals have stepped in to provide communities with a place to cultivate, learn, and connect with nature and each other.

These include Earth Tenders, a Black-led gardening organization based in Dulwich Park, South East London. Its goal is "strengthening local food systems and community health for the long-term," founder Ali Yellop tells me. "At the core of our work is a deep celebration of land practices, traditional knowledge systems, and relationships with the earth."

Co-led by community grassroots organizer Idman Abdurahman, Earth Tenders views "reconnecting with the Land as an act of resistance, healing, and self-determination," Yellop adds. It is a place where soil, culture, and storytelling naturally entwine.

Their BPOC Growers Club invites growers, culinary artists, chefs, and craftspeople from the Global Majority to curate a diverse and rich educational program. Past activations include a journey through Potawatomi botanist, author, and former director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) Robin Wall Kimmerer's book Braiding Sweetgrass, putting ancestral plant knowledge of the Three Sisters — corn, beans, and squash — into practice through planting, culinary artist Safiya Robinson (aka sisterwoman)'s sessions on spice blending, recipe exchanging, and collective harvest cooking, and community food grower Eyram Dzotsi (Gardens of Afruika)'s deep dive into ancestral dishes and fermentation practices.

While most of their programming unfolds in their Dulwich garden location, the organization has also brought similarly minded initiatives to the Barbican and Somerset House, spaces traditionally less accessible to BPOC. The reach and relevance of Earth Tenders' cultural calendar are thus far from confined to the borders of its SE London grounds: instead, the project demonstrates that a garden can carry forward indigenous knowledge and keep one's home alive even in a distant land. "I believe that by connecting with the earth, we can deepen our connection to our true selves and our communities," Abdurahman says. "This is the essence of Earth Tenders: finding our way back to what truly matters."

A desire to tackle inequality in access to home gardens also drives the Design Museum's Growing Together, a volunteer-led research, learning, and social collective rooted in sustainable design and horticulture. Launched in 2021 as part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Biodiversity Action Plan 2022–2027, the initiative runs annually under the guidance of programming curator Naomi Zaragoza and urban gardener Mandy Lee. Each year, stewards from the project's founding cohort of volunteers are joined by a new intake, recruited by the museum among artists, anthropologists, culinary professionals, curators, designers, herbalists, gardeners, and researchers, to sustain 12 months of gardening, intergenerational skill exchange, and public programming.

Among the highlights are seasonal garden salons, held in spring, summer, and autumn, which bring together talks and workshops exploring nature through a design-led lens by alumni guest speakers and facilitators like natural dyer and textile artist Studio Kuhu, The Gardening Drawing Club founder Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck, gardening technologist and activist Kalpana Arias, multidisciplinary artist Renata Fernandez, and Hackney Herbal.

In 2025, the garden's first design-led exhibition, Dwellings, Rehomed, featured a series of 17 experimental designer birdhouses examining our coexistence with other species in the face of non-stop urban development and human activity. That same year, The Nest, a tranquil, sensory installation crafted by the design MA students of Kingston University with natural and recycled materials in a peaceful spot on the museum's grounds, offered a safe space for people with dementia and their carers to immerse themselves in nature. Both are exemplary of how Growing Together has evolved into a pioneering think tank that's redefining what gardens look and feel like today while stressing the difference they can make in shaping our everyday.

Ying Ruo, one of this year's Growing Together volunteers, suddenly realized what it feels like not to have a garden when she arrived in London to attend a master's in anthropology at UCL last September. Throughout her childhood in China, she had always been able to spend time in the shared garden of her building. To make up for the lack of one in her student accommodation, she began to plant herbs in pots in her dorm, adding them to her food because it "reminded me of home," Ying tells me. She learned about the group through a talk at university and applied to join the cohort.

Ying's initial idea was to secure access to a garden, but it was only through gardening with people from different backgrounds that she realized how much the activity can help reduce the social isolation that comes with moving to a new country. Growing Together brilliantly captures the sense of belonging that tending plants with others can nurture in those who share that experience.

I am another one of the initiative's 2026 volunteers. The garden has been a space for me to share ideas across cultures and to learn about plant life cycles, soil, and climate change while growing spices in one of the raised beds. It has also allowed me to advance my ongoing research and writing project, Stories of Spice. My time with the team has allowed me to reimagine what growing spices means and has made me more aware of the importance of informal learning through social exchange.

If there's a London-based reality that understands the garden as a social project, it's OmVed Gardens. Based in Highgate, North London, they describe themselves as a "small garden with big ideas", interplaying between science, gardening, art, and ecology.

Founder Karen Leason is passionate about the revolution of the seasons and the magic of photosynthesis as the basis of life on Earth. Inspired by the summers of her childhood, spent in the woods under a sea of stars, she wanted to create a greenscape for people to convene and "spend time with each other and the more-than-human," Leason shares.

Earlier this year, I spent two days with their team learning more about the gardens and the projects hosted within them. On my first visit, head gardener John Gaffney led a tour of the space, talking through ways his team is tackling the effects of global warming and climate instability.

Some of these strategies include planting species more resilient to unpredictable weather fluctuations, like wetter winters and ever-warmer summers, encouraging pollinators such as bees and butterflies, and creating irrigation pathways during drought through indoor growing in a greenhouse-like space.

One way OmVed Gardens is championing a better plant future is through its brilliant Seed Saving Network. Started in 2020 as a way for growers across London and the UK to share seeds, growing tips, and preserve heritage crops, the network has expanded into a library and archive for future generations. On my second day at OmVed Gardens, I returned for a volunteer day with this network, harvesting lavender, roses, and seeds. The garden also has an enviable kitchen garden that grows produce for their culinary team, which experiments with fermentation and preservation and hosts regular plant-focused themed supper clubs.

Currently, it is the only garden in the country to have a 'groundfridge', a fridge of the future built on design principles from before the advent of electricity. Like a cellar, it nestles into the ground, using natural materials to stay cool in summer, plants around it to insulate in winter, and a solar ventilator to help retain a constant temperature of eight to 15 degrees at all times. The kitchen team uses the fridge to store their ferments for supper clubs.

Proving that it is truly a small garden with ideas, OmVed Gardens is also a place to imagine new ways to create art through its residency programme, with a rotation of artists invited to participate in nature-led projects and installations. The most recent installations featured artist Vivienne Schadinsky's Seeds of Time, which explores beans as seeds of hope for biodiversity, resilience, and planetary health, and Arran Gregory's Rammed Earth Bio-Sculpture, created using clay to live in the garden grounds and change with the seasons.

And yes, a garden may be a construct that serves health, but the garden as a place for inspiration to create art is not a novel concept, nor less important. Throughout time, gardens have played a role in artists' lives as a way of creative expression. In some ways, a garden that an artist leaves behind becomes a way of communicating with future audiences.

A breathing work of art set against the coruscating sea in St. Ives, Cornwall, late sculptor Barbara Hepworth's home, studio, and garden make her legacy immediately tangible to those visiting. When I last did so on a clear blue winter day in December, stepping into it felt like entering an oasis of serenity. More than the interiors, I was captivated by the sculpture-dotted garden and her greenhouse workspace, which feel like an extension of the outdoors, still kept as it was in her time.

The same is true of the garden at Charleston House, the Sussex home of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, which I traveled to in early spring this year. There, my eyes naturally turned to its flushed-with-tulip estate, which Bell's studio and bedroom overlooked, a reminder of just how much joy a garden can bring inside.

Most recently, I managed to secure a highly sought-after but rarely secured visit to 575 Wandsworth Road, the London residence of British Kenyan's poet and carver Khadambi Asalache, who created a garden where he planted trees like the mimosa that reminded him of his East African home and a workspace to carve the intricate fretwork covering the inside of his South London home.

On a balmy summer day, the roses, planted by Asalache, were in full bloom, facing London's heatwave with grace. Come autumn, I plan to visit filmmaker and gay rights activist Derek Jarman's Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, Kent, where the landscape garden is set wild, without any fence, directly on the shingle headlands.

All these artists are long gone, still, their genius lives in the portal of time they carved out of the trees, flowers, and fruits they planted during their lives, which constantly reveals glimpses of the past.

Creating a garden that responds to shifting environmental conditions and the anxiety resulting from them can be an intentional way to restore agency and contribute, albeit in small ways, to the fight against climate change. As the saying goes, you have to start somewhere — and where better than by restoring the ecology of your immediate surroundings by fostering a deeper interaction with the plants and people who inhabit them?

Louise, a freelance creative working with horticultural design studio Palais London, took up the challenge of developing her dream garden with the planet and beauty in mind. When she first moved into her flat in the British capital, her front yard was paved with concrete slabs. Earlier this year, with a little help from a landscape designer friend, Louise set about bringing it to life.

The garden theme began before the plants went into the soil, with a green painted patio door and window panels. She split it into sections, including herbs and edible plants like strawberries and flowers, and is considering throwing some trees into the mix. All that grows from it will be her legacy to this patch of land under her stewardship.

The seeds Louise has planted have been passed down from friends and family, like the poppies, which she inherited from her father's garden in Belgium. Perhaps that's why, although still in its infancy, the garden feels as if it has already lived several lives. As the sun makes room for dusk, there is a peacefulness to it that only comes in a place crafted with conscience.

Throughout the summer, my feed teemed with updates from friends sharing what they had been growing in their gardens or on their balconies. Sungold tomatoes, courgette flowers, strawberries. The season might be coming to an end, but people keen to make the most of spring-flowering bulbs (think daffodils and tulips along with garlic, onions, and hardy perennials) know that a fresh start is just around the corner.

Now more than ever, as public concern grows over AI data centers taking over precious green space and drying up already compromised water reservoirs, choosing to take to gardens — whether private, shared, or communal — instead of retreating to the digital world feels like the most logical and life-affirming pathway to safeguarding our future. In the words of essayist Rebecca Solnit, "a garden is what you want (and can manage and afford), and what you want is who you are, and who you are is always a political and cultural question." Turning a blind eye to shrinking green spaces, then, is a decision that could compromise more than we can imagine.

I began gardening this year, determined to learn more about the life cycle of spices. Earlier in August, the coriander, fennel, and fenugreek seeds I planted completed a whole lifetime, turning into seeds once again. In this process, I found solace in the garden and its changing rhythms, a community among the women tending the plants with me, and new reasons to imagine a life in an increasingly fractured world.

Like seeds growing into mature plants that flower and, eventually, return to their original state, we too are always finding our way back to ourselves. Some days that's the only order I can trust in an age where, despite us being chronically online, it's far too easy to feel disconnected. So when everything else fails, you'll know exactly where to find me: hands deep in the dirt, quietly hoping for new beginnings.

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