HMP Wandsworth - The Conservation Foundation

GARDENERS:
Inmates and staff of HMP Wandsworth
LOCATION:
Wandsworth, London SW18
NOMINATED BY:
David Jones
In recent years the staff and inmates of HMP Wandsworth have transformed the country’s largest high security
prison through gardening. What started modestly as a few planted tubs and hanging baskets has culminated in the
creation this year of the Serpent Garden.
Set on what was once an area of wasteland, the Serpent Garden is the prison’s pride and joy. You enter through a
brick archway into a Cottage garden incorporating a small pond to the right of the entrance to the left of the
pathway that runs through the garden is a wildlife area for insects and butterflies. As you pass through this area
into a sensory and touch garden incorporating three tapered half moon concrete walls whose inside areas are
grassed, behind these walls we have a wildflower area on one side and large shrubs on the other leading onto a
flower bed to the left which has a mixture of herbaceous and bedding plants enclosed with boxus hedging.
There is also another smaller flower bed which has
predominately herbaceous plants which is opposite a
seating area.
Also in the garden there is a Chicken Run which then leads
onto an Allotment area producing a variety of fruits and
vegetables.
As well as the Serpent Garden, there are now many
planted areas around the prison, tended by prisoners who
learn new skills along the way and at the same time
relieve the grey surroundings of this austere place.
This May, the prison grew plants for the award winning
Eden Garden at Chelsea Flower Show and tools repaired
in the prison’s workshops as part of The Conservation Foundation’s Tools Shed project were used to build it.