The Union Street Urban Orchard

Following the London Festival of Architecture and lasting through the autumn, the site of 100 Union Street in SE1 has been transformed into an urban orchard and community garden. Designed by Heather Ring of the Wayward Plant Registry for The Architecture Foundation and built with the help of the Bankside Open Spaces Trust, LivingARK and over 100 other helpful volunteers the gardens have regenerated a disused site in Bankside and created a place for exchange between local residents and visitors.

There will be a series of workshops and discussions focusing on biodiversity and urban food growing, please check the orchard website for the most up-to-date information.

The Urban Orchard is also home to the LivingARK, a zero-carbon pod which is inhabited during the period of the project to showcase sustainable ways of living.  The site also hosts The Nest, a pavilion created by the Finnish Institute and a skip turned table tennis table created by Oliver Bishop-Young.

In September the garden will be dismantled and all the trees will be given to local estates and other community gardens to remain as a lasting legacy of the project.

For more information on upcoming events and activities in the orchard, please visit the orchard website.


Photo by Mike Massaro

Make and Take Workshops

18 - 19 September 2010

To celebrate the dismantling of The Union Street Urban Orchard, The Architecture Foundation will be running a series of creative reuse workshops allowing members of the public to create useful objects from the left over Orchard pallets.

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