A homeowner has turned her city street into a real-life ‘Garden of Eden’ by planting its verges with wildflowers and fruit trees.<br /><br />Green-fingered Grace Hills, 36, seeded around 15 patches of barren land with crops and bug-friendly flora to create the ecological oasis in Eden Crescent, Leeds.<br /><br />She says she felt inspired to rejuvenate her neighbourhood five years ago due to her concerns about global warming and the future of the planet.<br /><br />So she embraced ‘guerilla gardening’ - where growers plant on unwanted public land without formal permission - to transform the 30ft to 50ft patches.<br /><br />The road is now home to apricot, apple, pear, cherry and plum trees - connected by miniature ‘wildflower meadows’ - which are perfect for bees and other pollinators. <br /><br />She said the impressive lines of planted verges had been dubbed ‘The Garden of Eden’ both after the street’s name and biblical references.<br /><br />Married Grace, who is a practising Christian, said: “We call the area where we’ve done it on our street ‘The Garden of Eden’ because it’s Eden Crescent.<br /><br />“But also, faith has inspired me to do this, because the Garden of Eden is in the bible, and the first tree we planted was an apple tree.<br /><br />“We’re up to 19 trees in total on the street. Fruit trees are great for taking carbon out of the atmosphere. But also, they give you fruit, so it gives you food resilience.<br /><br />“There are six wildflower verges. They’re a nice little corridor for the bees to go down and take all the pollen. Last year, we did vegetables on the verge.<br /><br />“I think if we can grow food on our doorstep, as well as it being zero air miles and no plastic, it’s going to be helpful for the future.”<br /><br />Grace began her horticultural project before the pandemic, while she was transforming the garden of her three-bed semi-detached home with green initiatives.<br /><br />And she said the local children on her street had been some of the earliest advocates of her idea to revitalise the verges, which cars previously parked over.<br /><br />Grace said: “I was just gardening in my front garden, and they’d lean over the wall saying, ‘What are you doing? Can we help?’ <br /><br />“But I couldn’t have them in my garden, so I came out onto the street, and we made this shared space between our houses. <br /><br />“We started by growing beans in little tin cans and then expanded. And now we’re at our boldest.”<br /><br />Grace said she had used seeds from native wildflowers to create the ‘miniature meadows’, which she said operate as corridors for bees to travel down.<br /><br />She later added other flowering plants, including lupins and hydrangeas.<br /><br />Grace said: “There’s a mix of those wildflowers - so yarrow and clover - along with the ones that people recognize when you think of wildflowers, so the blue cornflowers, the red poppies and the daisy-like chamomile flowers.<br /><br />“I call it a wildflower meadow, or corridor, as a generic term. But there are some garden plants in there.”<br /><br />Grace said the ‘vast majority’ of her neighbours had been thrilled with her attempt to make the road 'more
