West End Letters: BLIGHT | vegetables | derelict area

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West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 13 February 2009

Eyesore? Part of the former hospital site

Beat blight with vegetables

• THE large derelict area left by the departure of property developers Candy and Candy at the old Middlesex Hospital site is a distressing disgrace and visual sore for our local community.
It is likely to grow worse as time goes by.
Is there not some green environmental group, entrepreneurial person, or existing successful team, such as those at Phoenix and Camley Gardens, who could get the council’s co-operation in transforming this out-of-use space so as to produce vegetables for the community, or some other needed resource; if only on a temporary basis until building work begins again?
Spinach and potatos would be useful quick short-term crops, as they don’t need pesticides!
The Fitzrovia Community Association, which has good relations with Tesco, might be able to get financial/volunteer sponsorship from them, and they might be glad to market the crops as “real, locally grown”, unless it had been decided to offer them to local charities and hospitals.
This idea, which might need volunteer guardians to manage the site, came while welcoming the Guardian idea whereby councils arrange for empty properties to be licensed for housing on a temporary basis by guardians.
Dr Yvonne Craig
Ridgmount Gardens, WC1

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld.
Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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