Garden Party

Goldsmiths Community Centre Garden Party

On Saturday September 22nd from 12 to 4 pm all are welcome to enjoy Goldsmiths Community Centre's Apothecary Garden to mark the end of the Hubbub media resource project and to raise funds and awareness for the Goldsmiths Well Being Room.

Creating the herb spiral

As suggested by the CEL students who took part in the Hubbub project the themes of the garden party are Well Being and Making Connections. This will be an opportunity to find out more about the Well Being Room at Goldsmiths Community Centre, and what health and Well Being services are available locally and at the Community Centre.

Clay oven for delicious pizzas!

Healthy hot food will be available fresh and hand made from the pizza oven, and a range of traditional home made produce like cakes, lemonade, ginger beer, chutney, pesto and hummous will be on sale.

There will also be a book stall, bric-a- brac and raffles.

Come and enjoy the last of the good weather in a beautiful garden setting. See you on Saturday 22nd!

SPONSORED BIKE RIDE

The Goldsmiths Community Centre Well Being room is a project that's been running since 2009 and making a positive difference to the local community of Downham.

The Well Being Room is a hub for health and well being in Downham. It provides sign posting to local health and well being services as well as offering low cost complementary therapies.

To support this Rowland Smith and Elwood Amey who run the project are taking part in the Question Challenge bike ride . . .

WHO? Elwood and Rowland as they run the Well Being Room, also other members of DUCK Cycling Club doing their own fund raising challenges and joining in just for fun.

WHERE? Visiting all the places that sound like questions within cycling distance of London, so….starting at: HOWE, Norfolk, then WARE, Hertfordshire, then HOO, Medway, ending at WYE in Kent.

WHEN? Friday 5th October to Sunday 7th of October 2012

WHY? Why not? Cycling is a great way for people to keep fit. Elwood and Rowland want to use this challenge to show that anybody can take up cycling AND enjoy it AND raise some money to support a great project.

If you'd like to support a health project that's been making a difference since 2009 please visit the Charity Giving website http://www.charitygiving.co.uk/questionchallenge and make a donation to support the Goldsmiths Community Centre Well being Room.

Musings on roses, lasagna gardening

Roses grow on you, sometimes a bit too much

Reflecting on how much time and effort I can put (even with volunteer help) into the traditional method of double digging the community garden, I consulted with Elwood Amey. Elwood is a gardener by profession and helped the older people's group design the garden structure some years ago. He is also a trustee of the community association and a partner in the Wellbeing Service which inspired the idea of an apothecary garden.

We had a conversation about roses and which ones to keep. They hadn't been pruned for so long that one had reverted to its wild state and it will have to come out. While not the biggest of the bunch, it will take some doing. I've already got rid of one which was fighting to survive the competition from pernicious weeds and not really in the right place, unless you want your legs scratched to pieces as you pass. Another is defying attempts to grow up the trellis on the bunker, stretching out to the light in the opposite direction.

Ideally I'd like to replace them all with Rosa Mundi, the 12th century apothecary rose said to be named after Fair Rosamund, mistress of Henry II! Unlike the floribundas and the hybrid teas, lovely though they are, it won't end up with flowers waving 8-10 feet in the air. One of my earliest memories is of my grandmother's square rose bed featuring the gorgeous 'Peace' in her garden, located at the foot of the Peak District National Park; but she did employ a gardener to keep them in good shape.

Rosa Mundi (Copyright Peter Beales Roses)

I love roses and have grown many (and lost some to disease or being in the wrong place) - here are two of them.

The highly scented Portland Rose 'Jacques Cartier' (1868)

Hybrid musk 'Cornelia' (1925)

Mulches and 'lasagna' gardening

Elwood suggested I cut down the big weeds, cover some of the areas with cardboard, followed by a deep mulch of bark chippings and plant through that. Brian kindly supplied a very large double sheet for the area that I've designated for fruit bushes and some vegetables. I've pinned it down with the bags of old compost for the moment. I'm fond of the cottage garden look and have planted a hollyhock picked up for a song at Farmstead Road Community Garden stall at the Phoenix Festival.

Intrigued by the idea of a cardboard mulch I went on a journey through the internet and discovered the wonderfully named lasagna gardening. The idea of No Dig gardening was developed in the 1950s in the USA by Ruth Stout, who lived in Poverty Hollow, Connecticut, and wrote a book Gardening Without Work; for the Aging, the Busy and the Indolent! Sounds appropriate.

Here is a presentation on lasagna gardening by Philadephia County Master Gardeners (Penn State University), and an interesting blog about it. Enjoy!

Slow but rewarding progress

Excavations and planting at the community garden continue. Lush and bosky from the recent rain, the 'lawn' turns out to be meadow, with some interesting wildflowers in the mix, some associated with herb gardens and remedies. A weed is only a plant you don't like, as I often remind myself. 

On Monday I got in early and spent time digging up loads of herb bennet or wood avens (Geum urbanum) which had wrapped itself around the circular bed, yesterday I uncovered a patch of germander speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys) and last week a very healthy marjoram (Origanum majorana) plant under one of the rose bushes. The digging is proving a formidable task, but I have had offers of help including from the tutor of the baby yoga class. There is a lot of curiosity from the local community and I've had many an interesting chat through the fence!

A beautiful paeony, liberated from a blanket of brambles and ivy

Helped by the acquisition of about 35 bags of old compost the soil from excavated areas can now be replaced, to an extent. Some of the bags fell apart or were so waterlogged that any nutrients have long since leached out but they are all being put to use either in the excavated areas or smothering the weeds! Thanks to Brian for wheelbarrowing them in.

The raised bed is starting to look great, I wish I knew the name of the red paeony it is truly beautiful. I noticed a few bindweed shoots appearing in the circular bed but Andrea had done a really good job of tracking down the roots and they came out easily.

The french lavender is in flower and the plants are settling in

Since the circular bed has been cleared the garden is being visited by a group (?) of sparrows. My own garden in Brockley is visited by every other bird, small, medium and large, but not sparrows and I'm heartened to see them. As an urban kid they were all I saw apart from pigeons!

Got to do something about those doors!

Having cleared a lot of the brambles, bindweed is now springing up by the fence. Press on regardless. Still much to do, but it's taking shape - and looks a lot better than it did!

If you would like to help out in the community garden please get in touch. I am there on Mondays and Tuesdays but occasionally can't resist another day if I'm not busy. If you would like to help or visit, contact the community centre on 020 8698 3741, email me at hubbub@goldsmithscommunityhub.org.uk or use the comments section below,

The heavily 'pruned' roses, which are fighting back

View towards the preschool garden and chicken coop across the bags of compost

What is an apothecary garden?

The word 'apothecary' is derived from apotheca, meaning a place where wine, spices and herbs were stored. During the thirteenth century it came into use in this country to describe a person who kept a stock of these commodities, which he sold from his shop or street stall. By the mid-sixteenth century apothecaries had become the equivalent of today's community pharmacists, dealing mainly with the preparation and sale of substances for medicinal purposes. Authority over medical practice, however, lay with the College of Physicians. From 1672 until 1922, the Society of Apothecaries manufactured and sold medicinal and pharmaceutical products at the Hall, and in 1673 it founded the Chelsea Physic Garden, only relinquishing managerial control in 1899.

The Apothecaries' Physic Garden at Chelsea was founded as an educational enterprise; it was also established in conjunction with the possession of the Society's first ceremonial barge.  In July 1673 the Society took the lease on three-and-a-half acres of land on the riverfront at Chelsea and proceeded to build a bargehouse and cultivate a physic garden where, for well over two centuries, Apothecaries' apprentices and, later, medical students, were taught Botany and Materia Medica.

The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries 

The word Physic means the art or skill of healing. As a species name, the word 'officinale' denotes a plant that was traditionally sold in apothecary shops and was considered to have medicinal or healthful properties.  Many plants in the apothecary or physic garden were grown for cooking, healing, dyeing wool and fabric and 'strewing', or scattering over the floor for their perfume. Pennyroyal and Lady's Bedstraw kept fleas at bay. Traditionally apothecary or physic gardens grouped the plants according to their healing or soothing properties.

 

There isn't enough space in the Goldsmiths Community Garden for a full scale apothecary garden like the one at Cowbridge Physic Garden, west of Cardiff, or the Abbey Physic Community Garden in Faversham. The aim is to make it an educational space for all generations to enjoy and for the garden to evolve over time. Please contact me at hubbub@goldsmithscommunityhub.org.uk for more information, and to visit the garden (currently Monday & Tuesday only).

Hemerocallis flava with sweet cicely, rue, hop, thalictrum and lemon balm

Read this article by Francine Raymond in the Sunday Telegraph, October 2011.

Purple Sage, periwinkle (Vinca minor) and catmint (Nepeta  x faassenii)

Update on the community garden

A bit of background

I rented Room 3 at Goldsmiths Community Centre in mid-February as the base for a project Hubbub Community Media Resource, funded by Whitefoot and Downham Local Assemblies. The project helps local groups and organisations with publicity, marketing and fundraising using social media and aims to paint a picture of the local area through community reporting by adult education students and local people. Room 3 has exclusive use of what is known as the 'pensioners' garden (although I've not seen a pensioner in it!).
The garden had been neglected since the group who maintained it stopped. I'd had a go at it a couple of years' earlier, at that time a new Wellbeing Service at the centre had been set up and I had the idea to create a 'physic' or apothecary garden to complement it, growing herbs, aromatic and other plants used in traditional medicine, for learning and enjoyment. I applied for funding, didn't get it, and moved on to other things. When I came back and looked out on it, the idea resurfaced!

Bring a Plant Day

First of all thank you very much to all who came to the Bring a Plant Day on Monday 16 April , for their labour and plants, and for the fantastic write up of the day on this blog. There's not much more I can add, except it was quite spontaneously planned but we chose the right day for it! The plants have all been well watered now, despite their drought tolerance and a hosepipe ban. From an occasional hacking away in my lunch hour, the concerted effort by everyone last Monday has really made a difference and I met some lovely new people who are as interested in gardening as I am.

A word on those brambles. The green palisade fence which was put up last year augmented a chain link fence which had been there since the 1970s. The brambles were grown to stop intruders, and were pretty successful although the centre is not immune to stuff being hurled over or finding a way through.

When it opened in 1939 the community centre had no fence at all and opened out on to a recreation space of 13 acres, where the Excalibur prefabs now stand (not for much longer).

The community centre has been inextricably linked with gardening and food production over the past 70+ years. One of the first groups to be set up was the Goldsmiths Community Centre Gardening Society (now Goldsmiths Gardeners), formed in 1939 and who manage the Crutchley/Hazelbank Road allotments to this day. They held their first annual flower and vegetable show at the centre on August Bank Holiday 1939 and from 1940-1945 managed the open space as 144 allotments - 'Dig for Victory'! Thanks to local residents I have copies of certificates awarded by the Society for 'Truss of Tomatoes' and 'Prettiest Front Garden'!

For more than 30 years the Gardeners Society acted as a garden centre, providing seeds, bulbs, plants and compost to the local community. They still meet in the growing season on Sunday mornings at the centre. If you would like to know more about the history of the community centre click here

A big thanks again to everyone and to all the contacts I've made subsequently!