Community garden planting went well...

Maysie Garden -- Grand Planting Party

Glorious weather, lots of people turned out to join in the digging over and planting, we had photographers from the 'Great Book of Tottenham' project and a BBC News crew -- and by 3pm the garden was planted up and we'd even cleared up afterwards. Next session: Friday 22/10 afternoon, starting 2pm -- checking all is in order, possibly popping in some more low-growing decorative ground-cover plants. And if you see this in time, look out for us on BBC TV news this evening Mon 18/10.

In advance, I'd hovered between worrying we had too many plants lined up, and worrying that we wouldn't have enough. This session was to fill the middle of the garden with plants donated from local gardens, underplanted with crocuses and daffodils. The west side is (mostly) the warm 'gold' side -- yellows, oranges, reds, hot colours. The east is (mostly) the 'silver' side -- pinks, blues, purples. The middle bed is certainly stuffed pretty full -- with the soil still quite warm, which should help roots settle in before the winter cold. Around the garden edge and the centre-north bed needed to be mostly left clear for roses, lavender and a magnolia which will be sent when the cold has stopped growth -- but we put crocuses and muscari, dotted the surface with purple bugle, forget-me-nots, creeping jenny etc just so it didn't look too bare in the meantime.


Thank you to everyone who helped -- Audrey grew violas, wallflowers and primroses, Oscar stored the bulbs, brought chairs, tools and an impressive fencepost-digger spade, Paul vigorously de-turfed; his and Dorothy's hose watered it all in at the end; Lynda gave alliums, amelanchier, much advice, a hamamelis, a magnificant ice-plant (sedum sempervivum) and more plants; Sue L brought acanthus, bergenia and japanese anemones; Sue P gave many plants and loaned tools and gloves; Kazuko baked a delicious banana cake; Ben, Alice and Scarlet planted up the scarlet and orange bed; Jon and Christine, Maysie's nephew and his wife came down from Herts bringing some Hayhow family plants; Anne, Sarah, Gloria and others popped in for an hour or so to pitch in. Gavin at Grace Baptist Chapel loaned tables. Mahomed and parks staff from the Council dropped by -- the latter bringing slabs for the pathways and bags of compost and manure. Breannan and Thomas from the Bernie Grant Centre's 'Great Book of Tottenham' project took photos.

And a BBC news crew, following up the 'eight churches in one road' story about Lawrence Rd -- front page of Tottenham Journal last week -- saw us all as ideal local colour for getting some residents' comments on the story.