Geoffrey Idun was among a group of volunteers who spent over a year creating an award-winning meadow and community garden at Bemerton Corner. Photo: @bemertoncorner

VOLUNTEERS who spent a year tending to an award-winning wildflower meadow say they are concerned that council plans to build houses on the site signal that “nature isn’t important if you live on the poorer side of the Cally”.

Islington Council has recently revealed its plan to build 86 new homes on Bemerton Estate South, a housing complex near Caledonian Road.

Designed in partnership with architecture firm Levitt Bernstein, the Town Hall plans will see some garages demolished, open land covered and roof extensions added to existing buildings to make way for the new homes.

Under the proposals, 43 homes will be offered for social rent while the remaining properties will be sold on the private market or as part of a shared ownership deal.

New rooftop levels will be added to Dunoon House, which looks out over Copenhagen Street, as well as all three buildings that make up Caithness House. The estate, which is arranged in a broadly rectangular shape, looks onto an internal garden that the council says will be “improved”.

An extension that will add lifts to one of the blocks of flats is set to cover what volunteers call Bemerton Corner, a wildflower meadow that estate residents have been tending to over the last year.

How Bemerton Estate South could look under Islington Council housing plans

The group of residents won a “We Are Cally” grant from the Town Hall in 2021 to transform the patch of council land into a wildflower meadow, winning a silver medal in last year’s Islington in Bloom awards.

The group has celebrated “the wildflower meadow we so carefully created over a year” and is calling on its residents to “demand they provide us with some replacement for the nature they will be taking away”.

As green space is built over to make way for more people, volunteers point out there will be less green space per person for those living on the estate.

Geoffrey Idun, one volunteer who spent a year transforming the land into a wildflower meadow and community garden, said: “I was so proud when I saw the first butterfly fluttering around the wild flowers I had tended to. It was the first ever time I’d seen a butterfly on the Bemerton Estate.”

“I’m worried the developers who plan to build on our wildflower meadow don’t take nature seriously. They don’t appear to be replacing the nature they are taking away,” he said.

The group of volunteers are hoping to pressure the council into amending their plans.

“It’s an easy fix in my eyes – there’s a massive patch of paving just opposite the current wild flower meadow outside the Lewis Carroll Children’s Library which could be dug up and made into flower beds or a little collection of trees,” Mr Idun said.

“Their lack of suggestions on this front makes me wonder if they think nature isn’t important if you live on the poorer side of the Cally,” Mr Idun said.

The Town Hall does not comment on live planning applications, but in its local election manifesto released earlier this year, Islington Labour pledged to build 1,550 new “genuinely affordable and social homes for local people”. There are currently roughly 15,000 households on the register for a council home.