London Environment Strategy consultation

We have a garden that is not large but until now has been beautifully secluded in the middle of a Conservation Area in Chiswick, West London. The mature trees and greenery in our and neighbouring gardens offered beauty, privacy, screening and crucially acted as a buffer for the noise and traffic pollution from the nearby A4 and busy main road leading on to it.

Recently property developers have felled 12 mature, healthy trees in order to demolish a house and build flats on a plot of land next to our garden. Our view which was once of sycamore, yew, pear and cyprus trees is now of a building site and a main road.

At the same time other next door neighbours have applied to build a luxury infill house at the end of their large garden which would necessitate taking down 8 more trees and most of the greenery along the party wall.

My question to the Mayor of London is how can Council's be allowed to sanction such savagery of these precious trees which are the lungs of the city and provide desperately needed pockets of beauty and seclusion?

What is the point of a Conservation Area if the very principles of the scheme are ignored?

Whist we need affordable housing we don't need more luxury accommodation in back gardens.

We need to breathe clean air. So we must protect our environment and respect and save our trees.

We know this destruction of garden trees is happening all over London. We hope therefore the Mayor will recommend Parliament looks at planning laws which currently favour property developers over trees and foliage.

Trees and bushes take decades to mature and we lose them at our peril.

i live in a second floor flat overlooking a communal garden. It is my favourite place, I go there every day. I take my 4 year old upstairs neighbour there to give her mum a break, I potter about there. I love it. When my social landlord decided to rent out the garden flat here to private tenants at a huge market rent, it broke my heart, I have longed for a garden I can plant things and dig in for decades.

Yes, I have a garden which is in central London. I am also an avid recycler. But guess what? Camden have decided in their infinite greedy wisdom to initiate a charge for collecting garden cuttings such as grass, branches, leaves, etc. What clever people they are! so I now put all my garden recyclables into black bin liners and have them throw out with unrecyclable waste. If I get fined for this, I intend to challenge it, and if necessary I shall pave over my garden rather than pay an unjustifiable fee.

I have a garden, which is a great space to relax.

I would like to see a scheme where elderly people with gardens who are unable to care for them are partnered with people who love to garden and can help to look after it and can have access to it.

No garden, a courtyard between 100 or so flats. Mainly used as a place to smoke rather than a garden. Would be great to see local private parks opened up to others….

I don't think people lack information, just inspiration. Many of my neighbours have paved over their gardens or replaced lawns with artificial grass for convenience/low maintenance and for a 'cleaner look'. London has one of the best gardening shows in the world in the Chelsea Flower show, if those displays were made more accessible to the general public and more tailored to show what you could do with a typical London garden (or balcony, etc) then people may be more inspired to get involved. I'm lucky to have a small garden with a lawn with flowers, fruit & veg planted around the edges but I'm already a keen gardener and understand the importance of maintaining a habitat for wildlife.

Getting kids involved is also a great way to raise interest as parents get involved too. I think schools do a pretty good job already but we need more outreach into the community to support kids practising what that have learned in the real world. I'd love to see more community gardens using spare patches of grass around the capital (there are loads when you start looking for them!) and more support for local groups who want to do this. Support means agreeing access, providing access to water (either tap or install water butt), storage for tools, and limited funding for compost, seeds, etc.

I'd also like to see more awareness and support for creating wildlife habitats in back gardens, e.g. hedgehogs need a gap under a fence to explore and hunt for food. Maybe a scheme to re-house rescued hedgehogs in peoples back gardens if they (+ neighbours) have provided a suitable habitat. My son would love to see a hedgehog in the back garden!

I am lucky enough to have a garden and I have it covered in plants and real grass- I think it's so important for the air we breath. we are also lucky to live opposite some council housing with a small patch of grass outside. in the spring hundreds of crocus and daffodils pop up and it is absolutely gorgeous- it makes me so happy every morning to see it and I'm sure it is hugely important for other people who live nearby too. There are loads of huge paved areas around the Isle of Dogs and I think it would be great if we could get some enormous pots on them and get some green things planted!

I live in a block of 21 flats, which was the first block to be built in this road in Enfield, London in 1969. We are fortunate in having a lot of land round our property, which is of course, a communal area. It is well used by the families that live here and we even have a small forest. Had our block been built today, there would doubtless have been triple the number of flats and little spare ground - we are very lucky. That also partially accounts for the fact that if a flat is for sale in our block, it usually sells within a few days.

I don't have a garden but there are lots of mature trees in the Olympia car park which I overlook....however the land is owned by CapCo (the development company who took down Earls Court and bought all the nearby council houses for a pittance from the Tory Council in Hammersmith) They regularly come up with plans to cut down all the trees and build yet more housing for the rich and absent. Currently Thameswater plans to cut down all the trees and build a a storm drainage system which could have been placed on the bulldozed Earls Court site. At least I won't have 7 floors of housing pressed up against me
Every bit of green should be preserved so as to mitigate the dreadful pollution on the roads

I don't have a garden but the estate I live on has a beautiful green patch of grass. It provides a space for us to relax, a beautiful view from our flat, and helps to decrease the noise from the busy road and train line very near, however there is increasing pressure from developers to build on this site. This is the main issue for me - the greenspace that we do have is constantly under threat - and once it's gone, it's gone.