Effra Green Streets

Effra Green Streets is a collective borne out of the Lambeth branch of the national charity ‘Living Streets.’

It was set up to do something practical to improve the public realm, through greening the area and supporting changes to highways infrastructure brought about by Lambeth Council’s Sustainable Transport initiatives. 

The project covers 45 acres and 15 streets immediately south of Brixton town centre, around the Effra Tavern, including Effra, Saltoun, Railton, Barnwell Roads and the Brockwell Park Estate.

New trees, planters, and borders have been created in this area, some by Lambeth Council and some by individual residents. These include the on-street ‘pavement gardens’ - Barnwell Gardens and Rattray Gardens - Rattray Parklet, Low Traffic Neighbourhood filters on Jelf, Dalberg and Railton Roads, new trees on Rattray and Jelf Roads. It is the group’s intention to help maintain and enhance facilities which otherwise become, and look, ‘unloved’ over time. There are simply too many deteriorating planters and flower beds, often blighted by litter and minor vandalism, in our inner cities.

Effra Green Streets is a growing group of 60+ volunteers looking to maintain and extend these street interventions and to lobby for more changes to transform the streetscape away from car storage to more healthy alternatives, encouraging faster improvements to the public realm through greening interventions – more street canopy, wildlife planting, reduced vehicle traffic and speeds, reallocation of parking to greenery, better walking and cycling facilities, more parklets, more on-street seating. This can all be achieved within a relatively small area by local volunteers working with statutory bodies and local small businesses.

A successful example of the Effra Green Streets intervention would be the Barnwell Gate transformations; where fruit bushes, apple trees, existing trees, native mixed hedgerow, a white garden, a pollinator garden, vegetables, pond and bog gardens and species rich grass are being planted or maintained, with additional seating provisions, as well as ambitions to create an Urban Field of daffodils.