He’s a 40 year old policeman who is fed up having to move groups of young people away from street corners. ‘Where can we go Simon?’ they ask him.

I love it when stereotypes are torn to shreds. On Saturday I went to a community meeting which tore up all those prejudices about young people and threw them out the window (the prejudices, not the young people).

First there was Simon, the local bobby on the beat, who arrived with a child’s car seat in one hand and a Dire Straits CD in the other (well no-one’s perfect). Simon is a driving force of a plan to create a community garden on some spare ground behind a cluster of very ordinary looking flats, filled with far from ordinary people. He’s a 40 year old policeman who is fed up having to move groups of young people away from street corners. ‘Where can we go Simon?’ they ask him. He’s also fed up with the rubbish food they buy from local shops and the rubbish they throw on the ground.

Given the chance, he thinks, young people would much rather spend their time and money on something worthwhile so he has got his eye on the old railway tunnels across the river from the patch of ground that could become a community garden. His tunnel vision sees an art space where kids can make music, learn skills and hang out without disturbing the peace. He believes they will also help run the community garden.

Then there’s Davey, one of those far from ordinary folk who live in the flats. He’s chairman of the residents’ association and he knows how well kids behave when you give them the chance because that’s exactly what he does when he hands them the key to the community hut. ‘There’s the DVD player,’ he says, ‘Help yourself to tea and biscuits,’ he says. And do you know what, they not only clean up afterwards, they leave money for the tea and biscuits.

As if that wasn’t enough to crunch any remaining prejudices, along comes Linda, another local resident. She used to live on a London council estate where she created a garden on common land. To make sure the local kids didn’t trash her work she got them to help. She took them along to the nearest B&Q to choose plants and buy the stuff they needed to create a small pond. It worked. “Get them involved,” she says, “if they feel they have a share in what’s going on they might even get interested in looking after the environment.”

I must admit, I went to the meeting only because my mate Becky persuaded me to. She’s a landscape designer. Neither of us can afford to take on any more voluntary work but of course the project is so inspiring we are volunteering to help in any way we can. Now, while local residents form a steering group to start fundraising, Becky hopes to engage local school groups to help her draw up designs. And I have promised to write about the project as it begins to grow. When the time is right I shall do just that giving names and proper credit to this really amazing scheme.