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Bobby de Joia during a clear up on the Heath last year with volunteers from Gospel Oak school and City of London chairman of the Heath Committee Bob Hall, and Alastair Campbell |
From Central Park to the Heath Hands
New Yorker Bobby the force behind volunteers
BOBBY de Joia, who has died aged 76, borrowed an idea from her home town of New York that has helped Hampstead Heath retain its charm.
Bobby established the volunteer corps Heath Hands in 1999 and based her scheme on a team of workers who had returned Central Park to former glories.
Called the Conservancy, it was a group of gardening enthusiasts who gave up their time to do the labour intensive hands-on work that many park bodies could not keep on top of. Bobby’s volunteers have done the same, among many other jobs, and their work clearing invasive plants has helped replace the role played by grazing animals that used to keep scrub under control.
Born Roberta Zimmer in 1932, the New Yorker studied at Syracuse university before taking a staff job at Long Island Daily Press paper. She met her husband Alex, a language expert, after he offered to give her French lessons, and it was his job that brought Bobby to Hampstead in the mid-1960s.
Alex was given a secondment at University College London’s linguistics department and the couple moved to London with their young daughter Amy in tow. Bobby got a job at Hornsey Art College teaching fashion journalism and the family settled in Hampstead. It was this close proximity to the Heath that inspired her and led on to Heath Hands.
Bobby had decided to study for a PhD and chose for her thesis a study of voluntary conservation groups. She contacted the group who had worked to restore Central Park and brought the idea home.
Heath Hands, which runs sessions on the Heath through out the week, was the product.
She told the New Journal: “The volunteer corps in New York was so successful they got the contract to manage the park – we’re certainly not trying to do that. But when we moved to the Vale of Health many years ago we just fell in love with the Heath.
“In Central Park you’re much more aware of being in the city because of all the tall buildings; the Heath is completely different in that respect.”
Among the many projects Bobby worked on included cultivating an abandoned donkey enclosure and opening it to the public: the Whitestone Garden, behind Heath Street, was a patch of land home only to some run down public toilets. Bobby persuaded nearly 100 volunteers to spend two years clearing plants and weeds.
It now boasts mature hornbeam, hawthorn, cherry, birch, laburnum, rhododendron, foxglove, bluebells and heather.
Other interests included supporting the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and, after her husband passed away in 2004, she dedicated her time to the project and raised £100,000 towards making the idea happen, sitting on the Hampstead Conservation Area Advisory Committee and patient committees at the Royal Free Hospital.
Chairman of the Heath and Hampstead Society Tony Hillier said: “She made a huge difference. Her sharpness, energy and commitment to getting things done were incredible. She will be sorely missed.”
Heath superintendent Simon Lee added: “It is very sad news. We have lost another of the area’s great stalwarts.”
DAN CARRIER |
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