The garden at Metroland

Alongside our studios and gallery, Metroland is now home to a new green space in the making. Since 2025 we have been collectively transforming the neglected strip of land beside our building at 91 Kilburn Square into a vibrant, biodiversity-rich community garden.

The garden is a collaboration with Granville Community Kitchen, one of Metroland’s studio residents. Granville Community Kitchen is an ethical, sustainable, culturally diverse community food justice organisation offering food-centred activities, services, education and training that is accessible, family friendly and open to all. Founded in 2014 in response to entrenched deprivation and disenfranchisement in the local community, GCK is a Society for the Benefit of the Community, running a community kitchen, a community garden, a food aid service, and a solidarity box scheme, all aimed at enabling South Kilburn residents to access nutritious, affordable, and sustainable food.

At the heart of the garden is a mural in memory of two young artists from South Kilburn, Jan ‘Aset’ Francis and Roisin Francis, designed and painted by their artist friends — Dysm, Faum72, Marx, Panik, Vibes — in close collaboration with their mother Solveig Francis.

Nearby, the space is furnished with pieces built by our studio community through a series of workshops with artist Tom James, following the principles laid out in How to Build Your Own Living Structures, the 1974 manual by American designer Ken Isaacs — bringing his DIY, modular approach to living structures into a garden setting.

Once complete, the garden will offer pollinator-friendly planting, biodiversity-enhancing features, and a peaceful green retreat just off the busy Kilburn High Road — a space for MC’s resident artists, neighbouring families, and the wider community to pause, plant, and connect.

Heartfelt thanks go to Jan and Roisin’s family — their mother Solveig, Jan’s father Martin, and Roisin’s father Michael — and to the Jan & Roisin Francis Legacy Fund, Leslie Safran, co-founder of Granville Community Kitchen and Dhelia Snoussi, GCK director and Metroland studio holder, our volunteers, including students from Northwestern University Boston, and everyone who holds Jan and Roisin dear, for bringing this memorial into being.

The garden has been made possible with the support of Brent Together Towards Zero funding, Brent Edward Harvist Funding and the generosity and time of our local community.