Bilal with his sister Sarah

“DON’T let the world forget about Bilal” was the plea from the family of a little boy who was killed aged just 10 while on holiday with his mum in France, after a stage in a community garden was built in his honour – and is now threatened.

Bilal Selatna, a Year 6 pupil at Pooles Park Primary School in Finsbury Park, perished instantly – along with his mother – when a lorry drove into the back of their car as they drove back from Calais in the summer of 2007.

Now his sister and the teacher who planted “Bilal’s tree” alongside the stage, which has grown into an enormous cherry tree, have urged Islington to preserve the idyllic playground for children to use in perpetuity, as uncertainty hangs over the school in Lennox Road which has been earmarked to close.

The school is in one of the UK’s most deprived areas.

Young Bilal Selatna in Finsbury Park

“Coming from a housing estate where you don’t often have gardens, it was kind of the only garden that we had as kids,” Bilal’s sister Sarah Selatna-Reeves, 43, said this week.

“So I have fond memories of, you know, us holding hands rolling down the hill and running around in the woodland bits and stuff like that. I saw that the garden is possibly closing, including the school, and that was only about three days ago.

“I saw that and then I was in shock and horror of ‘Oh my goodness, these gardens could close and Bilal’s memorial stage is there. What will happen to that? What does that mean for children and their use of it?’ What a loss that would be.”

The memorial garden

She told how Bilal’s death was not the first tragedy to hit the family, after their father Ali was killed while Bilal’s mother was pregnant with him. He was struck by a car and killed in Fonthill Road, Finsbury Park, as she and her other brother played unaware just a street away in the school playground.

The mother of two now works in schools with children with additional needs and said she became a teacher because of the amazing experience she had at Pooles Park. She wanted to make it clear while she would be heartbroken if the memorial to her brother vanished, she is fighting to preserve a school on the site for the children who live in the area now.

Parents Jan Dixon, Catherine Galvin with her daughter Zoe Galvin-Oates, 11, and Paul Levy

Last week, education chiefs met parents and staff to talk about potentially closing the school and were unable to give assurances about the gardens at this stage into a consultation on their proposals, which ends on Monday. Should they decide to close it, its final day would be December 31 – although parents have sworn to fight to the last to keep it open, through academisation.

She added: “Bilal had a really good sense of humour, he was a really kind boy. People, children liked him. He had his whole life ahead of him. So it’s quite a tragic story. And that’s why I say it feels like our family has gone through quite a lot of tragedies with our father and then our brother and his mother, and so any positivity that can come out for other people is important to us.”

Bilal’s stage and the cherry tree in the community garden

Sophia Ioannou, who delivers environmental education work and has been at the school for 19 years, remembers Bilal and planted the cherry tree in his honour.

She said: “We planted a tree in the garden and his whole class came out and took turns to dig the hole. That’s why I say the garden is part of their lives. It’s not just a garden attached to the school. I knew him when he was student, and I was there when the stage was put in, and when the tree was planted. So there’s lots of memories there. It is a community space.”

A plaque honours him – ‘A great friend who made us laugh and a brilliant goal­keeper. He used to love to dance and perform.’

She added: “I’m concerned if they create a community garden what would that be? I’d ask that they keep a school here, it’s the only green space these kids have. They don’t go to the countryside.”

Calling it an “oasis in the heart of the city,” she described how people have turned up over the years looking for their own memorial trees:  “I had a parent who came and hugged a tree and was crying – she planted it 50 years ago after her child had died. Every tree has a story.”

The gardens have hens, frogs, a wildlife pond and a forest and opens to the community at weekends at least once a month.