Brighton & Hove Building Green volunteers ready for work…the Martlet’s ‘be more snail’ by the Green Wall just happens to have a garden and green wall theme!

In a successful partnership, volunteers from Brighton & Hove Building Green have worked with the council and contractors New Lawn and PH Beck to successfully save some Japanese Spindle plants.

The plants are about 40 years old, and were removed from their current location above the Concorde 2, coppiced, and re-planted along Madeira Drive Green Wall. There they will sit alongside their 140 year old neighbouring spindle plants, which were established by the Victorians around 1880. We hope they will grow well there, filling in gaps in the original planting scheme and helping towards the restoration of this unique vertical garden.

The work on the Concorde 2 was necessary to repair leaks in the roof. No-one realised how much concrete and rebar was used to create these planting beds – there are several of them along the length of the green wall to create habitat on the upper level.

The vision is to fill in the gaps in the green wall, which once stretched the whole length of Madeira Drive and is the oldest and longest in the UK.

Approximately 100 years separates these photos, showing Madeira Drive, the Volks railway, Kemp Town and the Madeira Drive green wall