Tomato glut

Well, not juicy, red ripe tomatoes, but definitely a glut of plants. Can't give 'em away and most diasppointingly they were not hot sellers at the fundraising plant sale last Saturday - curse those Gardeners' Delight that are so easy to grow and the whole grow-your-own trend. Now that more folk are in on the secret of growing food, they have no reason to buy my lovely homegrown plants!
I am gradually finding homes for them - the Vicar has pledged to take on a few and donate to the plant fund. Hallelujah!  Which is good news as so far we have £34.60 in the coffers, but have just been invited to apply for match funding from the council. This may well be the last year they have any money spare at all for green spaces, so hopefully we can get some Friends of the Burial Ground trowels into that pot and do truly something transformative.
It's a long haul this urban community gardening lark; equal parts heartening to see volunteers turn up and people dropping by to see what's going on and soul destroying to see plans for a 10-storey block of flats that will cut light dramatically and substantially reduce the charm of the strange little green space at the end of my road. That's another battle to come: maybe if we can create a beautifully planted space it will add more weight to our objections? But such is gardening and living in London - always under threat from planners with no imagination except for building more retail and residential developments.
Still, it was heartening, if rather damp, visiting some great spaces in Hackney on Open Garden Squares weekend  with Ian, Vic and young baby Kitty, who at 2 months old, was on her first garden visit. The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden  (pictured up top) is a triumph of greenery over derelict space with food growing, pizza oven and a welcome covered area. Farm:Shop is a fine demo of hydroponic growing in the smallest of spaces, with chickens on the roof and a polytunnel in the back garden; and Fasset Square (below), is a heartwarming tale of residents transforming a mattress-swamped dumping ground into a restored Victorian garden at the heart of the neighbourhood - and reportedly being the inspiration for Albert Square in  Eastenders.

PS.

So they officially announced a drout a week ago. Great - and now that we have caught up with all that missing rain, can the summer sun return please?



Mimosa days are here again

It's been a long while since I my last blog (can't help the Catholic guilt). But over the past few weeks Spring has definitely arrived, bringing with it a glorious embarrasment of riches: cherry blossom (check); first tulips (check); I've even spotted a precocious bluebell. But my favourite right now is this mimosa, all chick-yellow and fluffy; it has defiantly survived the cold, it smells quite unique and it's my mother's favourite too, because it reminds her of Italy.
I can offer up some excuses for my silence. Of course I've been gardening, which in my tiny space involves a lot of digging up and moving plants around. I break all the rules for small gardens with my unlimited planting palette (how can I restrict myself when there are so many gorgeous plants I want to squeeze in?). And my spare bathroom has now been requisitioned as a temporary greenhouse - cosmos, tomatoes and pimientos de padron seeds sown (has anyone tried these before? so far, very slow to germinate).
Meanwhile, I've also been spending quite a lot of time at Chiswick House. I started volunteering back in November, but the winter came early, so I didn't get a lot of digging under my belt. Now it's full steam ahead with school sessions and getting stuck into the Kitchen Garden restoration project. My husband says, 'Acton needs you more than Chiswick does.' This is probably true, but I'll bring back what I learn from the Kitchen Garden to new projects in Acton.
Which is already starting to happen. With the prospect of getting some funding to improve the burial ground at the end of the road, it feels like the right time to get a Friends group up and running. I'm trying to get my head round all the inevitable paperwork and commitment, but 14 neighbours have agreed to have regular gardening sessions and this year's goal is to sow and grow 100 sunflowers. We want to make a big statement of colour this summer. And I have another public project brewing, but more about that when it is fully formed.
The other significant distraction of the last few weeks is that I've negotiated to take redundancy in some of the cutbacks we're all having unleashed upon us and this has consumed rather a lot of my energy. The trade off is that I'm perfectly happy about this situation. In fact I am irrationally excited at the prospect of having no day job (for a while at least) and more time; and hopefully my various freelance sidelines in writing, design and creating public gardening spaces will have room to grow.