We sat down with Karen Liebreich — writer, gardener, environmental activist, and non-fiction author — on a mild October afternoon at the W6 Garden Centre Café in Ravenscourt Park. Over tea and falling leaves, we discussed climate action, volunteering, local politics, guerrilla gardening, and her past and present nature projects in West London — and why climate action drives (almost) everything she does.
The Green Londoner: Karen, before we dive into your many environmental projects, you’ve just finished a book. Tell us about it — we hear part of the story unfolds in Paris?
Karen Liebreich: It tells about the eventful life and brutal murder of artist Edith Borger, my aunt, whose Lost Studio was walled up, overgrown and completely forgotten for over fifty years, only to be rediscovered very recently.
TGL: Turning to your community work: you run Abundance London, an environmental and educational initiative reconnecting people with nature across West London. What are some of your main achievements so far?
KL: We have a few strings to our bow: We harvest surplus fruit – each season we collect tonnes (literally) of apples, pears, quince, plums, walnuts that would otherwise go to waste. We ensure it is used, by volunteers, food banks and top local restaurants and cafes. We create and maintain pocket parks which were previously dumping grounds for mattresses and old TVs, transforming them into pockets of biodiversity and beauty. We create fun, original art projects to enhance the public realm, such as the Chiswick Timeline, a huge permanent display of historic maps and works of art under the railway bridges at Turnham Green; or by covering the disused police station with thousands of hand-painted (by the community) butterflies and flowers. The W4th Plinth is a changing artwork voted for by the community on the railway embankment at Turnham Green Piazza (new work to be installed in January).
Some of the public realm improvements, such as the layout at Turnham Green Terrace piazza (benches, flower beds, bike racks, art works), or the recently-installed Ginkgo Corner outside the old police station on Old Market Place on Chiswick High Road have really made a lasting and substantial difference to the centre of Chiswick.
TGL: You work with a wide range of stakeholders — councils, schools, residents, and businesses. How do you navigate that landscape to deliver projects that truly benefit local communities?
KL: Over the years I have established a reputation for ‘getting stuff done’ and for sensible and sustained project management. For instance, if we create a garden, we ensure that it continues to be looked after. I try to understand the constraints that people have to work under; council officers are continually denigrated by residents, and rarely praised, and I discovered several years ago (somewhat to my surprise) that many are actually very thoughtful and committed individuals who enjoy working on positive and successful projects. By working in partnership much more can be achieved. Businesses have different constraints – a tough retail environment, for instance, the need to make a profit, so again it helps to try and understand their point of view..
Also, I’m very persistent and obstinate, so perhaps people have learnt that sometimes it is easier just to agree than to continue fighting – and then when the project is successful, they can claim to have supported it all along!
TGL: Funding is a constant challenge for not-for-profits, especially in a city like London. How does Abundance London make it work?
KL: Above all, we are very cheap and very cost-conscious so we have managed consistently to punch above our weight in terms of financial turnover.
We were approached last year by a fantastic charity who had identified us as fulfilling some of their core requirements, and asked what our funding needs might be. The Talent Fund now supports a Community Projects Manager who works the equivalent of one day a week. This has enabled us to extend our activities hugely, and has been the biggest single financial contribution to Abundance itself (as opposed to any funding for individual capital projects).
Other generous donors approach us – for instance, Capital Gardens (with a lovely garden centre in Sheen) recently offered us a huge quantity of free spring bulbs which we will be planting over the next few weeks. And for the last few seasons multi-Chelsea gold medal winner Jacques Amand has offered us lots of ‘end of range’ bulbs which has enabled us to transform many of our gardens and also to support other less fortunate groups.
We are often approached by residents who love what we are doing but cannot help us physically – just last week a grateful passerby gave us £40 and told us that she gets pleasure every day walking past the new garden we are installing outside the main post office, and thanked us profusely. (Another passerby bought us some sweets!)
Garden designers such as Ailand Gardens offer us lots of recycled plants that would otherwise be composted which we take care of in our ‘nursery’ (someone’s back garden) and then redistibute to our gardens.
This year we have produced a book – the Fruit Timeline (see below) – for which all the money from every purchase will go towards our work. Very generous donors paid for the printing costs (thank you Chris and Jenny Blishen, Louise Kaye, Julian Tanner, Jeremy Vine, the George IV pub, Terra Futura Fragrance!) so that every penny goes directly to fund our activities.
TGL: You co-founded the Chiswick Flower Market and The Kitchen Garden at Chiswick House — both now thriving. Why was it important to launch these projects, and what did you hope to achieve?
KL: The Kitchen Garden at Chiswick House was a two-acre walled garden under threat of being converted into a retail outlet and corporate parking space. Need you ask why it was important to launch that project? Now it lies at the heart of the Chiswick House and Gardens Trust’s community engagement and is a beautiful, sustainable and productive space.
The Flower Market was created as a project to revitalise the High Road, and encourage more planting and greenery. Like all High Streets, Chiswick was suffering from the usual woes – internet shopping, too much car traffic, nearby shopping malls… It is important to give people a reason to come to the High Road, and to make it a pleasant and fun activity. The Flower Market on the first Sunday of the month does that, and following that launch I helped a few other markets to get established on the other Sundays, so that now nearly every Sunday there is something worth visiting on the High Road. And with the establishment of Ginkgo Corner, with two specially crafted benches and several flower beds replacing a couple of under-used parking spaces, there is also somewhere green and comfortable to sit and watch the world go by. And as a Community Interest Company all the profits from the market are to be ploughed back into the local area creating yet more greenery and benefit.
I am tremendously proud of both projects which continue to thrive, though I have stepped back from direct involvement in both. They were created to add value in terms of the beauty, sustainability and greenery of the area, and they do. Important projects need a succession plan and I have learnt that founders can find that hard!
TGL: You’ve also brought art and history into the climate conversation with the Chiswick Timeline, a 60-metre mural of historic maps under the Underground bridge arches. What inspired that project, and what impact has it had?
KL: The bus stop outside Turnham Green tube is my bus home, and one day I was sitting there waiting with an old lady. A train rattled overhead, the rain pelted down, there was rubbish and pigeon shit underfoot, and flyposting on the walls all around and she said something like, ‘This is so awful, so ugly, dark, noisy, modern life is just so horrible.’ And I looked across from the bus shelter at the peeling adverts for fast food and rock concerts and thought… it could be better. Little did we know how complex the project would be and it took several years to get all the permissions and funding in place, let alone sourcing all the maps and artwork and then creating the actual images.
The day we launched it, the council let us close the road for exactly two hours, thousands turned out and the whole of Turnham Green Terrace was full of people as far as the eye could see. A year after its installation in 2018 it was nominated as a site of special importance for its contribution to the local character and distinctiveness, thereby receiving special planning protection, the youngest item on the list amongst ancient churches and historic ducal mansions. A schoolboy wrote to me that he had learnt more from the mural about local history than in many years of learning. And it has brightened up the area under the railway and made people respect it more. Less rubbish, zero flyposting, very rare graffiti episodes – and we even guerrilla pigeon-spiked the lamp posts to deter roosting birds.
TGL: Your Wikipedia page mentions you’re a guerrilla gardener. For those unfamiliar with the term, what does it actually mean? (And are you really “going to war” every morning?)
KL: Guerrilla warfare is defined as ‘unconventional warfare where small, irregular military or armed civilian groups use ambushes, sabotage, and hit-and-run tactics to fight a larger, more conventional force.’ We accept some of that definition – we are small, irregular, armed with trowels, secateurs and litter-pickers, we use swift tactics to fight the larger forces of climate change, nature deprivation and bureaucracy…. While some of our gardens are done without official permission, as time passes we are more and more often invited and even encouraged and assisted by the authorities. I suspect my guerrilla credentials took a mortal blow when I was awarded an MBE.
TGL: You wrote the delightful Chiswick Fruit Timeline: A History in Apples and Pears, tracing Chiswick’s long, fruitful heritage. Why this book, and why is it important to connect nature, history, and food — especially when so few people can name more than three apple varieties?
KL: I wrote this book to inform people about the environmental treasure they have under their noses. Chiswick plays a really important role in the history of fruit growing. Over a hundred varieties of fruit tree can still be found around Chiswick. The widest grown pear varieties in the world were propagated right here, and now feed huge swathes of people. Our old trees are hugely important for birds and insects, and without them everything collapses. Those in whose gardens these ancient trees grow need encouragement to care for them, and we need to appreciate their value. New orchards planted around the area ensure that as the old trees gradually give up the ghost, a new generation is there to take up the baton, and saving a wide selection of varieties is crucial to retain diversity and health.
Above all, you all need to buy a copy (or multiple copies!) to support the work of Abundance in greening and beautifying west London. Every book = £10 for us to spend on plants, bulbs, trees, compost (or insurance, trowels, picking baskets, etc!).
TGL: Finally: What advice would you give to Londoners who want to make a difference locally but don’t know where to start?
KL: Sign up with Abundance if you are in west London and come and do a few sessions with us. If you are further afield, find a similar group or just start greening your own little patch. Whether it is a tree pit, a window box, or your plastic-covered lawn, there are lots of small things you can do. As the LA gangsta gardener Ron Finley says, ‘Plant some Shit.’ I – more primly – would add: Plant some Shit and then look after it’.
Quick fire
- Favourite green space in West London? Chiswick House and Gardens
- Dream environmental project? Greening the Thames Path and making it the equivalent in beauty and impact as the New York High Line.
- Favourite apple variety? Last year I planted a stepover Tickled Pink apple in my tiny front garden. The fruit will have dark-red skin, reddish-pink flesh, and be suitable for both eating fresh and cooking, as well as pink blossom in spring. I’m waiting in eager anticipation…
- An inspirational book or person in the climate space? Robin Wall Kimmerer who writes about the interdependence of people and the natural world, and how we have to look after the plants around us.
- One everyday habit you’d recommend to any Londoner? Get outdoors, find some nature, enjoy it, and try to create some more.
- If you could change one London policy tomorrow, what would it be? Make care of green spaces a statutory duty of the government, (which would of course include finding a magic money tree to fund it, along with the essential training to ensure politicians, gardeners and urban planners stop doing stupid ugly shit).
