Midsummer update

Note the bucket and terracotta pipes - more later

This is the community garden in mid-February 2013 before the fruit trees were planted. We received a grant of £150 towards a mini-orchard from Capital Growth, and Elwood kindly bought and collected them from Keepers Nursery near Maidstone.

The photograph below was taken in May, with the fruit trees planted and settled in. We are now the proud guardians of three apple trees, three pear trees, a King James mulberry tree and a red filbert. The apple trees flowered and have produced fruit. The idea was to replace the brambles, which local people could pick if they dared, with something more substantial and less thorny! Removing the chain link fence from behind the palisade means that we can remove the bindweed more easily too.

The community garden benefitted last year from the Groundwork Hampton Court Flower Show re-use scheme, and again this June from their Chelsea Flower Show re-use scheme co-ordinated by Anne Marie of Lewisham Gardens.

Last year the plants were collected and distributed at St Swithun's, Hither Green Lane, and this year at Spring Gardens, Hither Green, a homeless hostel managed by the St Mungo's charity. The first articulated lorry turned up bearing large quantities of york stone, paving blocks and aggregate and the driver kindly gave us both a go of the grabber remote control - an unrealised dream until then!

Payback has paid off!

The payback team have taken the community garden to their hearts. Without their careful tending of the garden every Sunday, I would need to be there a lot more.

White borage, lovage and achillea with fruit trees in the background

Every time I visit there is a delightful new addition to the garden - this edging was made and installed by the team. The team have taken enthusiastically to planting, and the 40 or so plants I collected from Spring Gardens were in the following day. In some surprising places....

Imaginative use of the terracotta pipes, and a galvanised bucket! I hope to encourage the team to eat the lettuces and peas growing out of the pipes, which Anne Marie refers to as chimneys. The plants seem to like it and who knows, it may start a trend!

Courgette and leek, 'pipe' grown

The Apothecary Garden

Here are some photos of the apothecary garden, in full bloom. The white borage plant, bought last year from Dig This nursery in New Cross Gate (do pay a visit, if you need some herbs) surpassed all expectations.

The herb spiral, created last September

This is a garden I visited recently, in Downham. It was created and maintained by a group of disabled people, who due to funding cuts no longer tend it. I am looking at it for a project involving older people and gardening, and another to link community venues and green spaces across Downham, Whitefoot and Grove Park. Can you guess where it is?

Please visit the Downham Interagency website for details of how to get involved in these projects.

Big Dig 16 March 2013 and progress on the garden(s)

Come along to the Big Dig 2013 on Saturday 16 March 2013 at the community garden from 11am - 2pm. We have three builders' bags ready to fill and plant up with vegetables for the spring and summer, and fingers crossed the fruit trees and nut bushes will have arrived. We were awarded a grant of £150 by Capital Growth to replace the decades-old brambles with something less spiteful but still edible! The bags were donated to us by Lewisham Green Scene. 

Photo of re-using builders' bags courtesy of Permaculture

Progress at the community garden

An amazing transformation has taken place in the grounds of the community centre, thanks to the Community Payback team who have been working in the grounds and at the centre since the end of September 2012. Not forgetting the loan of Elwood's chipper (and a donation for the petrol and blade sharpening) which has been reducing vast quantities of vegetation into spreadable mulch. So much mulch.

Shredded vegetation spilling over the top of the compost bins!

We now have four compost bins in the community garden, all nearly full to the brim and the team will be constructing more for the hall garden. The team have been clearing the areas around the perimeter fence and taking the chain link down. The community centre can now be seen!

The front entrance, swept and kept tidy

Shrubs pruned and edging tidied

Transformation of the community centre grounds from a wilderness

The team have also helped at the centre, moving furniture, cleaning and redecorating.

Here are some photos I took of the garden, towards the end of October, in the late autumn sunshine.

The path to the gate, edged and swept

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.

Travels on a floral theme

The floral bridges of Quimper

A recent visit to Quimper in Brittany. Quimper is the ancient capital of Cornouaille and in the Breton language is called Kemper which means confluence; of three rivers the Odet, Steir and Jet. This was my second visit in 23 years (the last time being the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution) and I was amazed to see beautiful floral displays on the bridges. The cathedral is dedicated to St Corentin, a 5th century hermit who in legend nourished himself on a miraculous fish which re-grew the bits he ate! The cathedral is also home to Santig Du, the Breton name for 'little black saint', who dedicated his life to helping the homeless. We left a loaf of bread on the table beneath his statue, which will be distributed to the poor, and were immediately rewarded by an enquiry about the car our friend had been trying to sell! There is a church in Cornwall, on the Lizard peninsula, dedicated to St Corentin who as well as being the patron saint of Cornouaille is the patron saint of seafood (and very good it is too). Trading links between Cornouaille and Cornwall were once very strong, and the Breton towns and villages have similar prefixes - Tre, Pen and Ker.

Outside the cathedral itself the floral displays are stunning. There was a lovely carousel on the themes of Jules Verne, including a mini Nautilus.

The Cathedral of Saint Corentin, Quimper

Floral display by the war memorial at Ploërmel, Brittany

If you are visiting this beautiful part of France be sure to call in at Les Perdinettes, place de la Roche, Lesconil. Opened in May 2012 by our friend Hélène Boisson, if you can read French here is a review! What does Les Perdinettes mean? Hélène is the granddaughter of Pierre Corentin Draoulec, who was known as Perdine, and returned to her Breton home after a high flying career in the media representing French singers and actors.

Hélène at Les Perdinettes

Pierre Corentin Draoulec, known as 'Perdine' with his wife in traditional headdress of the Pays Bigouden

Hélène transforms found objects into beautiful creations

A pair of French 'Bridge' chairs

Bugs, butterflies and a new neighbour

On Friday 17 August we held the 'Build a Bug Hotel' workshop. We had a great day for it and all enjoyed talking about bugs, looking for bugs, identifying some and building various homes for them. We used bug ID cards - twelve in all including beetle, butterfly, honey bee, wasp, earthworm, centipede, slug, snail, ant, woodlouse, garden spider and grasshopper. We found every one except the centipede and grasshopper - we heard the last one, but couldn't see it! I'd seen one earlier in the week, by the preschool fence.

Bug ID cards - we found nearly all of them!

After a general chat about which bugs we found scary or friendly, where they are likely to live and what they feed on, we took a tour of the garden. Under the cardboard and plastic is teeming with wildlife - and look what we found...

Common toad (photo courtesy Jo Cooper)

More about common toads from the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust here

We saw some lovely butterflies, including a large white (otherwise known as cabbage white), peacock and gatekeeper butterflies. We also found a colourful stripy caterpillar which will become a Cinnabar moth.

Peacock butterfly on the preschool buddleia

 More about the Peacock butterfly from Butterfly conservation here

Gatekeeper butterfly on golden marjoram

More about the Gatekeeper butterfly on BBC Nature here

Cinnabar moth caterpillar

More about the Cinnabar Moth at Buglife-The Invertebrate Conservation Trust here

To encourage butterflies into your garden visit the RHS website and download the list of plants and larval habitats. I was very pleased that we have so many in the community centre grounds, not just in the garden.

After finding out where bugs like to live, we set about designing our ideal bug hotel and then made some small ones to take home. During lunch, we all tasted some lavender and wildflower honeys and put our apple cores, banana and melon skins on the compost heap.

Lavender honey and a splendid bug hotel design in progress

Designing the bug hotels

Mini hotel designs using straw, sticks and twigs, leaves, wood and stones to take home

The bug 'hotel' is constructed!

Without having to buy anything, we constructed the hotel from five old pallets, scavenged bricks and stones, donated logs and rotting wood, twigs, branches and dead leaves from the garden - here is the result! Thanks go to our intrepid builders (and their helpers).

Two old pallets, logs, bricks and stones, straw, twigs and branches for the first two storeys of the bug hotel

Four proud hotel builders, with their handiwork

The later addition of a bridge, to help bugs get to the upper floors!

The bug hotel is still a work in progress and later we will add some tiles, hollow canes and eventually a green 'roof'. If you can donate canes and tiles and other goodies to the hotel, come along to the Edible Gardens Open Day on 15 September from 11am -4pm and the Wellbeing Community Event on 22 September from 12-4 pm and add to it yourself!

Permaculture comes to Downham

What is permaculture? I've been finding out! Here's a quote from the Permaculture Association.

"Permaculture works with nature to make a better world for all. By observing the natural world we can see a set of principles at work." 

As a recent convert to sheet mulching (see my previous posts Cardboard Conundrum and on lasagna gardening) and a long time foe of waste, I am curious to know more about it. I will find out shortly!

Contact organicgardener@yahoo.co.uk for more details and to see if there are spaces available.

PLEASE NOTE PERMACULTURE WORKSHOP HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO 15th SEPTEMBER, 11am - 3pm to coincide with Edible Open Gardens Day.

Composting workshops at Goldsmiths Community Centre

Last week I attended the first of a series of free composting workshops. My garden is not really big enough for a compost heap and I've made do with a wormery instead.  What goes into a wormery is very different from compost ingredients. Once the compost bins had been built (out of old pallets) on Bring a Plant Day I was given loads of stuff to start it off, from chicken and guinea pig litter, grass clippings, newspapers and cardboard, tea bags, prunings and all sorts - even two bags of horse manure! 

Under construction

The compost bins - week one

Week three - doesn't show the huge pile of grass clippings yet to be added

I now have so much stuff that I am leaving it to rot down in black bin bags, in the empty compost bin, before adding it to the existing pile. The heap itself looked a bit dry the other week so I stuck a hosepipe in the middle of it. 

As I found out on the composting workshop that was the wrong thing to do! A closer inspection revealed slimy lumps of grass clippings and other bits of vegetation all stuck together and excluding the air. I must have a funny sense of smell as I thought it smelled quite nice, but Kristina with her professional 'nose' detected sulphur - not good.

We learned what can and cannot go into the compost heap, and the very good idea of preparing a mix of carbon (twigs, newspaper) and some nitrogen (green waste) before it goes on the heap. I think at first I had so much stuff that I just chucked it on willy nilly, ending up with a dry looking top layer.  If I haven't been at the centre for a week or so it sure mounts up - I think I may have been too successful in persuading everyone to 'donate' their waste.

After the workshop finished I forked most of the slimy stuff out and put it on top of the cardboard mulch, then filled the holes left in the heap with little twigs. Next time I will inspect it and do a more thorough job - possibly starting again from scratch!

There are still spaces on this great free workshop, on Wednesday 8th, Friday 10th and Wednesday 15th August. I learned a lot, and so will you! Contact Kristina to book: kristina.binns@lewisham.gov.uk