Community gardens From fly-tipping| to biodiversity in Manchester's alleys

'Every builder or workman that comes here says: 'I've never seen anything like it,"" Fiona Mitchell says, standing in what was a disused alley in Levenshulme, in Manchester, and is now a thriving community garden.

- Hannah Al-Othman

Mitchell, 50, who works at a university, and Jackie Austin, 75, a retired lollipop lady, transformed this alley during lockdown.

Now there are flowers, and herbs for neighbours to cook with.

There is a trampoline, football net, and dartboard for local children; a water and food station for the alley's resident cats; and a barbecue for the community. At night the ginnel twinkles with the light of thousands of multicoloured fairy lights. Solar powered, they come on at dusk, and the alley takes on a magical quality.

And while other inner-city ginnels - some only a few hundred yards away - give off unpleasant summer smells wafting out of ripped bin bags or from piles of rotting food, here the overpowering smell is the sweet scent of lilies.

For these neighbours, it was about building a sense of community. Austin was born in a house on the street and she now lives in one a few doors down. "I've been in the avenue 75 years, and when I was young we all used to sit outside and bring sandwiches out, and coffees," she says. "We wanted to get a community started."

When they set out, there were weeds all the way down the alley, past waist height. Austin's husband, John, who was then aged 84, cemented, from top to bottom, between the cracks in the cobbles.

"We started putting a few plants out, and then a few more," Austin says. Initially, because of social distancing, different areas tended by different residents were quite separate, but "eventually we moved closer and closer", she says.