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From Car Park to Garden

A magazine article about how neighbours turned an unused car park into a community garden.

Five sentences have been removed from the text below. For each question (1-5), choose the correct answer (A-H). There are three extra sentences which you do not need to use.

Three years ago, the land behind Hollins Road library was an empty car park that nobody used. Weeds grew through the cracks in the concrete, and people often dumped rubbish there. Rosa Delgado, who lives opposite, was tired of looking at it every morning. [GAP 1] The council agreed, but only if local people raised the money for the work themselves. [GAP 2] By the end of the first summer, they had collected nearly £4,000. Local shops also gave them seeds, tools and young plants. The first job was the hardest. Volunteers had to break up the old concrete by hand and then bring in tonnes of fresh soil. [GAP 3] Today, the garden has twenty raised beds, a small pond and a greenhouse made from old windows. There is also a wooden bench where older neighbours like to sit and chat in the afternoons. Each bed is looked after by a different family or group. [GAP 4] Their teacher says that pupils who never ate vegetables before now ask to take some home for dinner. The garden has also brought neighbours together. [GAP 5] Now there is a barbecue every August, and everyone in the area is invited. Rosa hopes other towns will copy the idea. 'You don't need much,' she says. 'Just a piece of land and a few people who care.'

• A. One of them belongs to the primary school next door, where the children grow strawberries and beans.
• B. To do this, they held cake sales, quiz nights and a sponsored walk.
• C. After that, the space was used as a weekend market for several years.
• D. Before it opened, many of them had lived on the same street for years without ever speaking.
• E. She wrote to the town council and asked whether residents could turn the space into a garden.
• F. This made the work much quicker and cheaper than anyone had expected.
• G. Many of them had never done such heavy work before, but nobody gave up.
• H. However, the families are not allowed to take any of the vegetables home.