Meet the estate residents picking up trowels and spades to fight harmful social housing stereotypes
Photo: Tom Whitson
A gardening group at Dove Street, one of Bristol’s landmark high-rise estates, has battled negative representation in the media, fire safety issues and the threat of demolition – and in the process forged a new sense of community.
The high-rise Dove Street estate, which was built in the 1960s after the demolition of Victorian and Georgian housing, sits below one of the most affluent neighbourhoods in Bristol.
Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, a guerilla gardening group on the estate has secured thousands of pounds of funding from government and council grants, such as the Levelling Up Community Infrastructure Levy, in order to kickstart environmental projects – and has pushed back against negative public perceptions of the high-rise estate.
Last October, a once-barren outdoor terrace next to Carolina House was brought to life with new basketball hoops, picnic tables, water butts and murals. “We invited everyone [to the celebration] who had been supporting us and working with us,” Munoz-Chereau says. “It was an incredible day.”
Mike Stuart, a resident who has lived on the estate for 20 years, says the atmosphere was like a festival. “It felt like real success, such a change to what it used to be when nobody knew anybody and everybody felt a bit scared,” he says.
Bernie Munoz-Chereau (left) founded a guerilla gardening group during lockdown (credit: Tom Whitson)
When Munoz-Chereau started the community garden in July 2021, which children on the estate named ‘Dove Gardens’, she uncovered a rosemary bush, apple tree and pear tree hidden in what had become a fly-tipping corner. “We were building on somebody else’s idea,” she says.
“One lady said to me, ‘I’ve lived here for five years and I’ve never felt part of the community until today’,” says Kath Baker, who lives in Carolina House. “It’s about breaking down the fear and letting people know they’re not on their own”.
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I’m a diversity consultant and a design and communications consultant. I help people and organisations develop vision, communicate and deliver cultural change.