Dr. Connally is the Managing Director of Cherwell Collective.  In this piece on community garden vandalism, our freelance writer, Michael Hines, joins her. Hines contributes to our website about general news, climate science, and reducing the Carbon Cost of our lives.

In May 2024, unknown vandals damaged a living garden sculpture that Cherwell Collective created with the community in Kidlington. Lately, we considered this sad event in the context of a broader trend of community garden vandalism in the UK.  The trend raises questions about some citizens’ misconceptions about shared resources and how we can reduce stigmas and negative views.

A living sculpture of a unicorn is damaged with graffiti that reads "The King has no clothes".
A living sculpture of a unicorn is damaged with graffiti that reads “The King has no clothes”.

Cherwell and Community Build Living Sculpture to Highlight Waste

Back in May 2023, Cherwell Collective collaborated with local Oxfordshire artist Mollie Mae Cox to create a “living sculpture” in Kidlington’s Green Space Garden in Park Hill. This community garden has grown food for several years and is freely accessible to the public.

The sculpture, approximately 2.5 meters tall and 4 meters in length, is of a white unicorn. The unicorn alludes to King Charles III’s coat of arms and his majesty’s legacy of calling attention to climate change. 

The living sculpture of a unicorn is unveiled on Earth Day 2023.
The living sculpture is unveiled for Earth Day 2023.

Innovative Reuse of Waste Is Part of Our Mission

Our Waste Innovation Station Headquarters (WISH) led the project. It all started with a collection of litter that had been illegally dumped at Cherwell Collective.  Items we collected included used tyres, damaged wooden tables, a broken recliner chair, and scaffolding poles. We formed these into the underlying structure of the unicorn.  Additionally, a collection of used milk cartons helped form the head of the mythical beast. 

Part of the project’s mission was to call attention to the scale of waste in our daily lives. The National Lottery (UK) Community Fund sponsored the project as part of Cherwell Collective’s waste innovation efforts.  As part of our unveiling, volunteers helped collect trash from the park as part of our Big Help Out.

A family does a litter pick at the Cherwell Collective Kidlington Big Help Out event.
Litter pick for the Kidlington Big Help Out run by Cherwell Collective.

Waste provided the structure for the unicorn. However, its further purpose was to have something good bloom metaphorically and literally from that waste.  The unicorn’s hindquarters were covered in planting chambers filled with green plants and flowers. These plants cascaded down the unicorn tail into a garden area at ground level. Over 50 volunteers helped support the planning, building, and planting of the sculpture.

A group of volunteers adds plantings to the tail of a living sculpture of a unicorn.
Community volunteers add plants to the tail of the living sculpture.

Unfortunately, approximately one year after the sculpture was unveiled, community members discovered it had been damaged and covered in graffiti.

Community Garden Vandalism Is Too Common in the UK

This vandalism of the unicorn in Park Hill turns out to be far from an isolated incident. A number of acts of vandalism to community gardens and shared food resources over the past two years disturb us.

  • Near Norwich, the village of Hetthersett experienced vandalism on July 11, 2024, to a cherished community garden. The miscreants smashed, snapped, or burned shared items like picnic tables, baskets, and a weather vane.
  • A similar attack took place in March 2024 at Thorn Park in Plymouth. The garden, run by the charity Park Pharmacy Trust, was open daily so that visitors could experience a range of medicinal plants on display. 
  • In January 2023, vandals also destroyed a greenhouse and damaged plants in another community garden in the Derbyshire community of Butterly. In the process, the vandals drained 4,000 liters of water from storage tanks on site and destroyed seedlings for the next season’s crop.

These attacks are representative of other destruction of community gardens in the UK in recent years, as well as some we have seen recorded in the U.S. and Canada.

Bizarre Destruction of Shared Farm Plot Raises Questions

Perhaps no act of vandalism toward community gardens was more extreme than an attack in Harlow last year that attracted international media attention. In that incident, vandals poured 6kg of salt onto a farm plot where volunteers grew food surplus for 1,600 needy individuals. In a video distributed via social media, the tear-struck organizer of this farm plot wondered aloud why anyone would destroy a shared community resource in this way.  According to her report, the crop of onions alone would have helped feed 300 families. 

Salting the earth is one way to make a plot of land ungrowable for many years. It was as if these vandals wanted to ensure the shared resource couldn’t be accessed anymore.

The attack in Harlow struck a chord with us because that farm plot and its assigned mission align with that of Cherwell Collective, including providing food surplus to needy families. Harvest @ Home, our organization’s branch that co-created the community garden around the unicorn, has a motto of “food security from the ground up.” This means we share resources to increase food security by empowering people in need to grow their own food.

Meanwhile, our mission at Cherwell also centers on actions we can all take to mitigate climate change. Soil and plants sequester carbon, thereby reducing the impact of additional carbon in the atmosphere. Furthermore, harnessing food surplus furthers our mission to reduce food waste, which is responsible for some 8% of all global climate emissions.

Why Do People Attack Shared Resources Like Community Gardens?

The acts of vandalism leave several questions begging to be asked. Are these events purely random? Do some community members feel hostile to shared resources like community gardens?  Moreover, are some people perhaps angry at charitable food donations, imagining that they deprive farmers or food retailers of income?

Vandalism of shared resources can be tied to a variety of potential triggers, some mentioned below, followed by relevant additional thoughts:

  • Individuals often falsely attribute the provision of shared resources as some aspect of local government. In fact, private not-for-profits, not government authorities, traditionally provide these services. 
    • On the contrary, Cherwell Collective is not part of any elected authority. The generosity and innovation of the community itself drive our work.  
  • Individuals with certain cultural or ideological beliefs might oppose the concept of shared resources. They might believe that individuals should earn resources rather than a community providing them.
    • Overproduction, which leads to the surplus we share, is problematic for the planet. We think the greater good is in putting all surplus to use. That helps society to tighten production loops and lessen the impact of supply chains on the climate. 
  • People who do not directly benefit from a shared resource may feel excluded from its benefits. Meanwhile, those who must now rely on such resources might feel jealous, resentful, or ashamed. Such feelings may lead them to vandalize as an expression of their emotions. 
    • We hope this piece helps people better understand that everyone is welcome to the shared resources Cherwell Collective provides. 
  • As deprivation and poverty increase, so do reports of community vandalism. This could reflect discontent with change in social or economic status and the need to mentally remove oneself from the stigma or try to destroy something once viewed as only for “other” people. 
    • One of the reasons we have an open-door, non-means-tested model at Cherwell Collective is to reduce this stigma, but our society still has much work to do.

UK Cost of Living Crisis Warrants Shared Support

With the cost of living crisis in the UK in recent years, shared resources like free community spaces and gardens that provide food surplus are more important than at any time since the Victory Gardens of the World War II era. During that time, the UK experienced a more unified society working together to endure, keep calm, and carry on across the home front. We wonder how the contemporary UK can embody that mindset again not only for this current short-term economic crisis but also for the longer-term climate resilience we must build

Cherwell Collective as an Inclusive Space for Community Building

Today, some individuals may believe that if society has more shared resources, there is less for a given individual. This is the sort of “zero-sum mindset” Cherwell Collective works to move away from using our many community-based activities that are open to all, regardless of need. When it comes to food, the UK wastes enough each year to feed our entire population three meals a day for almost three months. We have more than enough to share. 

In times of hardship, we can all feel a bit lost, and disconnected. Often, vandalism is a cry for help by those feeling powerless. That may explain some of the community garden vandalism seen in the UK recently.

Lastly, to the unknown vandals, we say this. As part of our community, you are welcome to join us and build a better future together. Bring your voice to our table. Come for the food, stay for the revolution.  Cherwell Collective always welcomes your participation, whether for meals at Cherwell Larder, our regular garden sessions, or as any other type of volunteer.