BRIEFING By Christopher Woodward 1. Enjoying old Paradise Gardens © Matt Collins
The power of sunlight The power of sunlight is rarely discussed within the profession, but as the director of the Garden Museum explains, it needs our attention.
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unlight is power. Ten years ago, I planted a fig tree in the park opposite the Garden Museum. Each year the fruits swell a tight green – and that’s it. The figs never ripen. The park is where William Blake’s garden was a fruitful and lush Eden in the early 19th century; two hundred years later, there is too little sunlight to release the energy within the fig by which it ripens into a sweet fruit. I can buy figs from a shop, of course. But in East London, this sunlight deprivation has been a cause for the return of rickets in a new generation of children. Sir Sam Everington OBE, who leads an admired GP practice in Bow, estimates that 50% of the children at his surgery are deficient in Vitamin D. ‘It’s going back forty years’, he exclaims. This is not a futuristic disaster movie
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in which the sun is vanishing from the earth. No. Very simply, London is selling off the sky above to developers. The London Skyline Campaign calculates that 525 tall buildings are in the development pipeline. Each tall building takes away a sliver of the sun. Forever. We have begun a campaign to ask the Greater London Authority to guarantee a minimum of six hours of sunshine in London’s green public realm. The GLA’s proposed policy is that it is acceptable for a park to receive 2 hours of sunlight in 50% of its area, as measured on 21st March, the annual equinox. (This is a policy proposed in the Supplementary Planning Guidance “Good Quality Homes For All Londoners”, which is part of The New London Plan, and is about to be signed into law).
At a Lambeth Planning Committee, I spoke with our neighbours against a scheme by developer u+i to build three towers of luxury flats and overshadow the little park in which we work on community garden projects. But that objection was struck out: the Planning Officer explained that it is acceptable for a park to be in shadow – or in night – for twenty-two hours of the day on 21st March. I didn’t believe it at first, but it is true. In 2011, Dr Paul Littlefair of the Buildings Research Establishment was asked to come up with a single number for sunlight hours for all outdoor amenity areas across Britain, from a tennis court in Tunbridge Wells to a parking space in Sunderland. (Dr Littlefair is one of the good guys: at our Inquiry he appeared on behalf of a community
