July 2024
Meet Mark Richardson – Harrow Rec’s 'Green Team' Leader
as told to Graham Jack by Mark
In the late 70s, when Mark Richardson was a small boy growing up in nearby Salisbury Road, enjoying the swings in Harrow Rec with his mum, he cannot have imagined that 40+ years later he would be in charge of a team of gardeners, looking after this park and others.
Known in the park as the “Green Team”, our user association really values the work they do to keep the park looking its best, maintaining the sports pitches, tending the beds and borders, and fighting back the tide of litter that threatens to engulf us after sunny weekends bring out the picnics and parties. Our volunteers enjoy working alongside Mark and his team, and they, in return, value the role of ‘Friends’ groups.
Back in the 90s, The Rec’ had a dedicated staff of eight gardeners and keepers, and “turf maintenance” involved not only the cricket pitches we have today, but also grass tennis courts, a putting green, the bowling green, and several croquet lawns – reputedly used by our national champion players.
Those dedicated staff are long gone, and today Mark’s mobile team of 20 look after the Rec and over 80 other parks and open spaces. The croquet lawns and grass courts are also gone, and turf maintenance today involves making sure that the nine cricket pitches in the area are ready for the weekend players – the strips mowed and the creases marked out.
As a youth, Mark spent hours in the park, with his brother and their mates, dodging the park keeper as they did all the things that kids and teenagers can think of that are not allowed. He tells me about the time his brother, climbing in over the locked park gate, slipped and found himself hanging upside down, with one trouser leg hooked to the spikes on top. When they could stop laughing, they managed to free him by undoing his trouser belt and letting him slide out.
He attended local schools including Marlborough and Hatch End High. Having found school life hard due to being dyslexic, he decided further education wasn't for him. In 1991, just turning 16, he was fortunate to get the opportunity to join Harow Council’s Parks team as a YTS trainee (the Thatcher-era Youth Training Scheme which was helping young people into employment back then). He was soon back in “his” Harrow Rec, armed with an array of potentially lethal tools and precious little supervision, and hoping that “Parkie” wouldn’t recognise him and exact revenge.
Disaffected with studying, he was dismayed to discover that the job required him to spend one day per week at college, but quickly learned that he had an aptitude for gardening and grounds maintenance, and was soon the proud holder of several C&G qualifications, including “top-of-the-class” distinction in Fine Turf Management.
From his first, casual labour contract, through the many contracting ins-and-outs, and reorganisations of the parks department, sometimes banished to work the street verges and estates of the borough, or tied to a desk, Mark has always found his way back to the work he loves the best, out in his beloved Harrow Rec in all weathers.
Like Roger Katenhorn, who was featured on these news pages recently, he is well placed to see the changes that have taken place in the 30 years that he has been working in and around the park. In this picture you can see him standing next to one of our “Mayoral Oaks”. Now well over 10 metres tall, he remembers planting it as a sapling in 1996, when it was the same size as him.
Not one to blow his own trumpet, Mark is hard-pressed to pick out one highlight from his time in the Parks Department, but his pride in his job shines through, and the award that he and his team were presented with at Harrow Council’s “Staff Stars” this year is a testament to that.
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