Aaron McKay + Ethel-Athel Alleyway Garden

In Summer 2025 we worked with Community Gardener Aaron McKay and local resident H to build and plant a Community Micro-Allotment at Civic Partner venue Ethel-Athel Alleyway Garden. Initial seedlings were planted in Spring 2024 by our children’s art collective with Aaron as part of Despacito Art School. 

This micro-growing project formed the core activity of Open School East’s Civic Programme from 2024-2026, exploring what grassroots, community-led regeneration looks like within the cultural ecology of Margate. As part of the programme, Community Cooks Keely Burrows and Thom Eagle delivered workshops with older members of Despacito Art School at Ethel Athel Alleyway Garden’s Community Gardening Day 2025 and 2026. Here they shared recipes, growing ideas and foraging tips. Older Desapcito members also worked with Thom to produce a series of OSE pickles at The Perfect Place to Grow, which were served at our Summer Exhibition 2026.

As part of this project we also worked with Aaron, Keely and local residents to create a community cooking pamphlet titled Growing Wild, which includes nutritious and budget friendly recipes that can be made with produce grown at Ethel-Athel Alleway Garden. Produce grown has included rhubarb, strawberries, mint, sage, radishes, carrots, spring onions, courgette, tomatoes, chillies and more.

Ideas and resources developed out of this work were then shared over the two year project at the OSE mobile unit, through pop-up workshops at Civic Partner venues.

The Community Allotment will continue to be tended into our next programme cycle, where we will explore planting for natural dyes, pigments and analogue film processes.

OSE’s Community Allotment is generously hosted by Civic Partner Ethel-Athel Alleway Garden, and maintained by OSE Community Gardener Aaron McKay with key support from local resident H. This rehabilitated grey-space plot in the heart of Cliftonville West was established by dedicated volunteer residents on the adjoining Ethelbert and Althelstan Roads, who continue to manage and maintain the site.

Aaron McKay is a gardener and Forest School teacher based in Ramsgate, Kent, with a specialism in child-led and outdoor learning. Aaron oversees OSE’s allotment planters at Ethel-Athel Alleway Garden. He has previously worked with grassroots, neurodivergent play charity See Me Play at The Garden Gate Project, and with Open School East’s Despacito Art School as part of the programme cycle Home is where the garden is.

Ethel-Athel Alleyway Garden is a community-managed space that aims to foster social inclusion. Historically, the alleyway was a space lost to fly tipping and street crime. The alleyway now provides a setting for a range of activities, from gardening and creative workshops to communal events, creating casual social space for the community.

This Civic Programme project is part of OSE’s two-year thematic cycle Home is where the garden is – find more events: openschooleast.org/home-is-civic