Cultivate Colindale is a 4,000sqm green space hub for community, culture and the circular economy, developed by Wayward in partnership with Notting Hill Genesis as part of the wider transformation of the Grahame Park Estate in North London.
Located alongside Heybourne Park in an area experiencing rapid change and regeneration, Wayward was invited not simply to design a space, but to help create social and environmental value and strengthen community cohesion. Rather than delivering a conventional landscape project, we were brought on to imagine, build, activate and steward an evolving platform that could grow with the community over time.
At the heart of Cultivate Colindale sits the Wayward Plants Reuse Centre, a year-round base for rescuing and redistributing plants, trees and landscape materials destined for waste. Around this, a wider landscape is emerging: growing spaces and gathering spaces; a greenhouse complex and materials yard; biodiversity fields, nature play and allotments; a tree nursery, workshops and outdoor classrooms; alongside artist commissions, creative collaborations and partnerships with universities, cultural organisations and community groups.
Conceived as both a vital everyday green space and a new form of cultural infrastructure, Cultivate Colindale responds to a gap in provision within the area. Alongside creating a welcoming place for local residents, it aims to become a platform for experimentation, exchange and public life, bringing artists, designers, researchers and communities together around questions of landscape, reuse and collective stewardship.
Wayward has taken on an unusually broad role in the project, leading its design, delivery, programming and long-term stewardship. With planning permission currently secured for five years, and the potential to remain for as long as ten, Cultivate embraces the possibilities of meanwhile space while asking what temporary landscapes can become when given time to evolve.
Built through extensive creative reuse and reclaimed materials, the project has been designed as a whole-life landscape, with future phases and eventual transformation considered from the beginning. For us, everything is temporary, but temporary does not have to mean disposable. Cultivate is conceived as a living test site for circular systems and creative reuse, designed with its next chapter already in mind.
Want to get involved, volunteer, collaborate or follow the project as it grows?
Visit Cultivate Colindale