"Wiltshire Ripple"
Saturday was our first planting day on site, disappointment at the all the beds not being complete was off set by excitement to see just how many seedlings folk bought in from their back gardens and balconies. We're basically mirroring the planting across the two sides of the site, so on Saturday we made a start on one end. It's a lot of rake, plant, label, water ... rake, plant, label, water ... rake, plant, label, water etc. etc.
This is the UK Eurovision seed contest entry coming on site!
Amidst the soil humping on the site I wanted to put a big shout out to Tim Mackereth and staff at Anwick Forge, who made the much-admired galvanised bespoke steel corners - all 137 (I think) of them - for the project.
We found the company via the RHS , as they'd done a Hampton Court show garden last year that we'd admired. Tim was incredibly helpful with evolving the design, as well as being a great communicator and delivering on time and at a very fair price. Speaking as someone who's just emerged from an arduous house-building project, these qualities are rare as hens teeth in the construction world!
Barney and Chris filling beds
What a way to celebrate ... filling endless raised beds with top soil and topping them off with our new supply of compost! Joking aside, although it might not be what Chris would have ideally choosen to do on his big day we were all pretty excited today as the first compost from East London Community Recycling Partnership (ELCRP) went into our beds. We collect, but it all comes free from this great community resource.
Abbey Gardens Needs You!
Thanks to a neat bit of work by the lovely Dorian Moore, brothers French & Keith Roberts at Newham you can now watch us work at Abbey Gardens ... and it's very hard work!
*Click here to see the live webcam*
Better still you can come down and help in person!!
We really need volunteers this week (15th - 19th of
June) to help us construct and fill 800M of raised beds.
If you have a spare day, or even an hour after work, come down to
the site and we will find a way for you to help out. It's helpful
to let Chris our Garden Club Leader know you're coming, but you can
also just drop by and ask for Nina, Karen or Chris. The wonderful
construction team (led by Danny from City Wood) are happy to
accommodate helpers in their team, or you can just get stuck in to
the literal mountain of topsoil we need to move.
Hope to see you on the wheelbarrow line.
Dasha made everyone bacon sandwiches ... the volunteers are mainly those in the photo with tops on (!)
Thanks to Louis, Tim, Tim, Dasha, Andreas & Michael for a long day's work under the careful supervision of Danny & the City Wood team. We made great progress today after a really big push from everyone.
It's day three already and I've been too exhausted to post any images before now!
The site actually started to look like it's taking shape today.
See you on Monday guy's for a little more back breaking !!!! lots of love Barney xxx
'This is a BIG hello to all those I have and haven't met at the Abbey Gardens site. I will be running a series of workshops throughout the project at Abbey Gardens and I am here if you have any questions about your seedlings, so please don't hesitate to get in contact, my details are below. I would also like to introduce the latest addition to WWTHB and that is the 'Mule' bicycle trailer it will be an alternative use of transport for plants, compost tools etc. Anyway enjoy the sunny weather over the weekend'
Chris Cavalier
Gets everywhere but nice Blue flowers ... these are Chris's seedlings
That one would be borage my dear! Great for butterflies!
and for a noce general feeling of well being!!!
I think CZ currently have the lead
In the Eurovision spirit of friendly competition towards a shared end game (!) obviously there has been a little bit of light seed growing competition going on in preparation for the big planting at Abbey Gardens. As you can see from the UK entry on the left I have a rather less picturesque growing conditions than the Czech contingent ... Come on Germany where are you!
Any other growers for the garden out there please do email me your seedling pictures and I will of course add them to the Blog (after careful scrutiny!)
website design & build by dorian @ the useful arts organisation