Many thank to Andy Webb for all his hard work on Saturday when we enjoyed a one-off (almost) rain free day at Abbey Gardens ... and despite the very soggy conditions managed to dig and prepare the fruit tree trench, sort out the compost and FINALLY get the wonderful metal What Will The Harvest Be? sign on the back wall!

This sign is a good example of the number of hoops you have to jump through to actually get anything on site at Abbey Gardens, the site is a scheduled ancient monument so everything has to first go past English Heritage, then it goes past Newham council and in this case the councillors, then you have to work out if you have enough budget, then how to make the thing and then where to get it made etc etc etc. Suffice to say we were originally going to paint this message on the wall back in the early days of the project when we were still naive and optimistic! Anyway there were a few 'bright isn't it' comments from the Friends group but personally I think it's a triumph and for once through the convoluted permissions process we have in this case ended up with something much better than the original design. It was made in the end by 4met a company near St Neots in Cambridgeshire very near where I grew up.

After all this we all retired to Dasha's house for celeriac soup and mulled wine to toast our first fantastic season and say good bye to Chris our Garden Club Leader for the year who is going to be much missed.

The card FOAG made for Karen and I is so great I might have to take a photo and post it up!

Topics: [Abbey Gardens] [Chris] [Garden] [sign]

Posted December 7, 2009 09:14 by Nina Pope