Skip Garden

Skip Garden is an award-winning project run by Global Generation, a charity providing opportunities for young people to create a sustainable future. It gives a set of invaluable skills for young people building upon gardening skills and even a business acumen. It is partly funded by the Big Lottery and the materials are provided by The King’s Cross Partnership, BAM Nuttall, Carillion and Kier.

Initially, Skip Garden was positioned in different spots in King’s Cross and has now just above Lewis Cubitt Park and the King’s Cross Pond. It used to be garden plots built into skips and has expanded by the local community. Some of the structures on site were created by students of the Bartlett School of Architecture in collaboration with Global Generation.

The garden was built collaboratively between children as young as 7 years to businesses, local families, teenagers, students, architects and engineers in helping build and providing resources to bring it together. Recycled materials were used to build the garden with most of the materials found from the construction sites at King’s Cross.

The plot grows fruits and vegetables such as apples trees and pumpkins. The garden is for the most part self-sustaining employing such practices as aerobic and worm composting, fertilising with comfrey juice, companion and rotational planting, rain water harvesting and bee-hive maintenances. The produce from the garden are harvested and used to create delicious food at the Skip Garden Kitchen.

Earthbag Coolstore - the structure made from recycled timber was created by Aleesandro Conning-Rowland of Bartland School of Architecture. The structure is layered with recycled coffee sacks from a local coffee rostery and each one is filled with earth. A cooling effect is provided from the evaporation of the moisture of the bags and helpfully collects rainwater to keep the plants within the structure hydrated. Ventilation is added in through the designed stacks that give the structure the maximum area to absorb the sun keeping the produce fresh.

100 Hands Wall is created by Christophe Dembinski and features a walled space made entirely from earth, showcasing the sustainable ways we can adopt in construction.

Rain Loos by Carrie Coningsby uses reclaimed railway sleepers and boarding are stacked against each other to create two cubicles. Water is collected from the rain water streamed into a membrane covering a steel beam, which is collected into the cisterns of the toilet.

Glass House is created by Rachael Taylor used for a growing space and hosts Twilight Gardening sessions. The skirtings of the Glass House is made from low-tech curtain wall made from recycled sash windows. These are held up with scaffold board wall that leans against a shipping container.

The Chicken Coup is created by Valerie Vyvial which completes the link to the closed system of the ecological cycle of the garden by bringing in a structure to house three chickens. At the centre of the structure houses a 2.4m long silver birch tree from Hampstead Heath. The structure is built with bamboo put into place with steel fixing cast.

The Grey Water Dining, created by Yangyan Liu, utilised a small reed bed system at the back of the kitchen, which cleanse the waste water from the kitchen ready for watering. This design provides a wetland dining area. Pedal pumps are used to lift the filtered water through a water storage tank which is then used for gravity-led irrigation.

The Welcome Shelter is created by Charlie Redman. It is situated by the Skip Garden kitchen and due to its mechanism, it can provide shelter through changeable cover.

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