Is that an apple tree Mr. Grace? ….. fruit …. flowers ….. and a heap of bushes in Hulme

Now I grant you the greening of Hulme may seem tad bit of an exaggeration but there is no doubt that chunks of the place are very green.

Coffee, cake and flowers the Hulme Community Garden 2023

And I don’t mean those huge expanses of open grass underneath which are the remnants of the deck access properties and Crescents of the and are now stretches of land waiting for something to happen.

More Community Garden, 2023

No I mean those pockets of trees, shrubs and wild flowers which have been left to grow  wild, like the small patch off Old Birley Street beside the Brooks Building and MMU campus, or the fruit trees outside Kim’s Kitchen.

True these bits of green are nothing compared to the fields which stretched south from Cornbrook down to the rural outposts of Chorlton-cum-Hardy and Didsbury.

They were all still there in 1819 when Mr. Johnson drew up his superior map of Manchester and the surrounding areas, but within 30 years everything from The Duke’s Canal, down over Stretford Road was filling up, although past what is now Rolls Crescent was still open land.

Open fields through Hulme Moss Side and on to Withington, 1819

But already the comfortably well off were building their fine “surburban” homes with large gardens as far as Moss Side and by the 1890s both Hulme and its neighbours were full of terraced housing with their grid like streets.

And even more Community Garden, 2023

So, now with the third development of Hulme it is fitting that places like HulmeGarden Centre should be offering up an oasis of plants where you can go and sit, enjoying a meal at the café or coming away with some much-loved plants.

Location; Hulme

Pictures; Hulme Garden Centre, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and a detail from Johnson’s map of Manchester, 1819, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/  

*Hulme Community Garden Centre, https://hulmegardencentre.org.uk/