Tayshan Hayden-Smith has lived in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea all his life.
In 2017, in the wake of the Grenfell fire he began guerilla gardening in public spaces around Grenfell and North Kensington.
Gardening wasn’t something Hayden-Smith had much previous experience of, but he quickly found people wanting to join and support his efforts to gain some agency over the public space in his community.
In early 2020, with the backing of a growing community, Hayden-Smith founded Grow to Know with fellow gardener, Danny Clarke. A not-for-profit vehicle aiming implement change and connect people to nature and tackle misconceptions in horticulture, it also addresses the reality of life in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
“It’s not all Hugh Grant,” Hayden-Smith says of his area. “To put the disparity of Kensington and Chelsea into perspective, if you walk less than 10 minutes north from Holland Ward, where celebrities like David Beckham live, to Notting Dale ward where I live, the average life expectancy falls by 20 years.”
For people on the breadline, gardens and nature are never going to be top of the list of priorities. But the value of them is just as important for them as it is for anyone else living in a city.
“My experience of the gardening world is that it assumes everyone has that luxury available, but for many Londoners, that isn’t a reality.”
“I think it can be easy to forget that time, capacity and resource are all luxuries,” says Hayden-Smith. “My experience of the gardening world is that it assumes everyone has that luxury available, but for many Londoners, that isn’t a reality.” In light of this, Grow to Know aims are clear: “we are more interested in how we can weave nature access into everyday life.”
Observing and understanding the landscape is key to Hayden-Smith’s vision for getting people interested in nature.
“That could be on your way to school, on your way to work,” he says. I spoke to the friends that I play football with about how for most of our lives, even in the centre of London, we’ve been outside and surrounded by trees, playing in parks. We’ve seen them, we know they are there, but our involvement with the green space around us has been passive.”
Hayden-Smith wants to change Londoners’ perception of nature and engage people with a broader sense of gardening beyond it being the preserve of people with the time and money to prune their roses.
“Gardening tends to be a very one dimensional, often very traditional space, at Grow to Know we are trying to change that,” he says. “We are working to bring nature into spaces that it hasn’t been before, and communicate through a different language that speaks to a different kind of person, through fashion, music, sport and wider culture. We want people to see what we do, experience what is around them and say, ‘nature, that’s a bit of me’. Once you see the world that way, it moves us to engage and respect it.”
“We are creating a safe sanctuary of real meaning to uplift the community of North Kensington, not just to survive, but to thrive and bloom.”
Hayden-Smith has recently published Small Space Revolution, a book that builds on these values, making nature accessible, but also aims to change the way we value our natural surroundings, both for people and plants. “As humans, we are uniquely placed to accelerate natural processes, we can create a garden, plant mature trees and manage spaces that would otherwise be much slower,” he says. Small Space Revolution unpacks some of the ways to achieve this.
Most recently, Grow to Know have been working to transform Maxilla Gardens, located under the Westway in North Kensington, into a space for the whole community.
More than another park, it's a space to find solutions to the social and environmental challenges the community faces, as well as telling the story of the people who live in the area. “We are creating a safe sanctuary of real meaning to uplift the community of North Kensington, not just to survive, but to thrive and bloom, alongside nature and wildlife.”
The garden, which will be free to access, will open to the public early next month.
