Mr and Mrs Ali pay the garden a visit

On Saturday, Mr and Mrs Ali, Shakir Ali's parents came to see how we have been progressing with the garden.
Shakir Ali is the young man who was murdered in front of the garden in July 2001.
Mr and Mrs Ali were very grateful to all the people who have helped in the garden, they like the idea of an arch of roses to commemorate Shakir.
Mr Ali has expressed an interest in helping out in the garden and has left his contact numbers, he lives nearby.
I am also examining ways of contacting local artists to see if there is someone who might be able to make us a sign to say that this is a community garden. We could put in a further bid to the community council if necessary, as they did not spend all their grant last year.

Margaret solves the water problem

Margaret and Mick discovered that their hose will stretch across the road, so Margaret was able to water all the planting in really well, and we only seem to have lost one plant.
Since this gloriously sunny picture, autumn has started to set in, and so we are facing the last few opportunities to work on the garden before it's just too cold.
There's just one last bag of manure to be dug in, and although I've taken the hoe to the border and the middle bed, we've still got weeds coming through.
I clear up the leaves as ofen as I can, but that is going to be an on going job if we want to keep the garden looking cared for.

Miranda and Janet sort out the centre bed

Great news as the centre bed really starts to look like a garden. Miranda and Janet chose some perennials that are still giving a bit of a show at this time of year and started to plant it up. We have had to water the plants in, but Mick has a tap in the front garden and Margaret suggested we use that.
Mick managed to go one better and get the hose across the road on Sunday morning, so that should help a lot.
Lots of people commenting on the garden and so far nobody has touched the plants.
Things are certainly looking up.

Campsis Grandiflora

Well done Carol, what a good call ! She suggested the Trumpet Vine or Campsis Grandiflora as a spectacular climber to fill our middle trellis. We managed to track one down and have done a slash and crystal job on the holly, so let's hope it works. It was too hard to dig it out and now the rugby season has started Nathan hasn't much time at weekends. Luckily our sample was in bud, so we could see straight way how stunning it's going to look against the wall.
We've now got all the perennials in the back bed so there's just some alliums to go in and we can just leave that for a bit. More and more people are stopping to notice now it's starting to look like a garden.

Taking Shape

At last we are starting to look like a proper garden. The back border is clear except for the holly, that can stay until there's been a decision on what to plant in the centre to climb up the big trellis. Both of the white climbing roses are in, they were half price in Homebase so Michael snapped them up. We were given a euphorbia by Ita from the St Mary's Garden, and we've put in some perennials that were chosen for being drought resistant.
I've made some attempt to mark out the central bed, I think it looks OK, and that means that the path is starting to emerge where the bed meets the back border. I've got some edging for this, not very beautiful but we can grow plants right up to it to disguise it. I spoke to the lady in No35 when she was mowing her lawn and she has promised to try to grow a mallow from cuttings.

Planting at last !

The really exciting picture ! Michael found that Homebase were selling off half price climbing roses, so we got this one, and with a bit of help from Ivan planted it on the trellis closest to Miranda's. It looked so good, we decided to go for a symmetrical bed at the back and bought a second one for the other side just before they sold out. Michael's acanthus plants seem to be coming along well, so they will soon be joining the roses along the back wall.
Still looking for good ideas for the middle trellis.

Front corner clear !

I only seem to be able to do one picture at a time at the moment, so here's the one of the front corner, all nice and clear. This may not look much, but it actually took ages to get it out.
One other plus is that the brambles that used to predominate in this corner don't seem to be there for the moment, but let's not speak too soon.

Bad news for Angie, but good news for the garden, lots of worms around when we were digging.

Back from holidays

Good old Nathan ! All those hours in the gym weren't wasted when you can help with digging up those enormous stumps of shrubs that are just too heavy for most of us.
Grabbing a window of opportunity between work, rugby and the gym, he successfully managed to winkle out the two big stumps at the back and the small rather spiky one in the front corner.
This was inspired by some stalwart work from Ivan and Carol who have been back on the weeding patrol again, so the back wall and what will be the centre bed are now looking very respectable.

Big Day as the trellis goes up !

The two Michaels did the hard work while Penny and Miranda offered advice and electricity to ensure that the last part of our phase one was completed in time for the next meeting of the Community Council -just.

The trellis will be useful for climbers to help cover the back wall, and in joint agreement we decided to put up one large block in the centre and two smaller trellis panels on either side.
It's amazing that the wall has kept so free of graffiti given how much goes on generally in the borough, but i think people are now aware that the garden is being cared for, and no loner use it as a large bin, in the way they used to. Tons of weeds are coming through again, but at last the brambles seem to be giving up the fight against the Roundup, so hopefully we'll soon see the last of them.

The Wall

Mick is an absolute hero ! In what seemed like a matter of minutes he was up the ladder and filling the cracks and hey presto ! A beautiful new wall that is not only a lovely colour, but a brilliant background to the plants. One of the smelly bags of manure has been distributed around the garden, we still need to dig the second one in. The remaining two can wait in our front garden until we have plants to put in. Mick is getting the trellis, as the wall looks like an invitation to taggers and graffiti artists, so we'll need to get that up as soon as.

TV camera due today to have a look at our work so far.

Oops! Forgot the daffs !

Sorry about that, forgot to add the photo of the daffodils, the grape hyacinths were good with them, and matched the car as well. Since then Ivan has returned to the digging, and other exciting events have also taken place. They will be reported in the next posting. Over the weekend Angie, Miranda and Penny did a bit of muck spreading, as the soil is very poor and dry and we need to get some goodness into it. So far a bag of farmyard manure has been dug in, we have 3 more to go and plenty of digging still to do. Pleased to report that Angie wasn't attacked by any worms.

A little bit of springtime

The bulbs were lovely, especially the tulips at the back. Lots of people noticed, and happily there was a lot less litter once the flowers started to bloom.
The daffodils were a lovely mixture, and Malcolm's hasty planting scheme was a great success.
Ita came over from St Mary's, the community garden where she does voluntary work. She sketched us a lovely little plan and made suggestions for planting. Some of the plants we can buy at St Mary's, it's a lovely scheme where adults with learning difficulties or who are HIV positive go to garden. It would be really nice to link up with them.

Time to get started

Hurrah for the Community Council ! Hopefully most Church hill Gardeners will have got an e-mail saying that we have a grant for £750 from the Community Council to beautify our garden. I went to the community meeting at South Grove Primary School on Monday 26th February where the projects were voted upon.
Each resident was given 3 red stickers with their papers and asked to vote for the projects which were pinned up on the walls. Luckily I'm not a shy person, so when I realised that nobody knew us or knew about us, I just went up to anyone who looked friendly and said,
" Please vote for us, we're just a group of ordinary people in Church Hill Road....."
and basically I bored a few people into putting their stickers on our project. When they started adding up, I noticed that a man on my table hadn't bothered to vote at all, so I asked him to at least vote for us and the guy he was talking to agreed, so he did. It turned out the man's mate was the deputy leader of the council, so he probably did it to impress him rather than me.
Anyway, that one vote may have made all the difference, because we came third, and they had agreed to fund the first 3 projects.
So I've sent off the Bank details to Theresa at the council, and hopefully the money will soon be paid in.
Meanwhile...
Ita Keown, who works at St Mary's Community Garden in Hackney came over on Tuesday to measure up and suggest what we can do and how we can start. Ivan and Michael also came over and I wrote up her suggestions and posted them to everyone I have an e-mail address for.
I'll have a bash at getting them on the blog once I've spoken to Nathan about the best way of illustrating them.

A bit of excitement !

There's something in the garden and it's not just an empty Ribena carton ! The bulbs seem to be coming through, so there's a chance we might see a real difference in the near future.

Still waiting for the back wall to be painted, hopefully if the warm weather is approaching, that won't be long now.

Other good news is that I've been speaking with Theresa O'Brien about the Community Council's bids for funding, which need to be to her by 9th February. I think that will be possible, I'll get something together and e-mail it to everyone I have an address for to see what you think. Whatever happens we're going to do the garden, it would just be nice to make it really something. We really need to have something to stop people slinging stuff there, it's amazing they find it necessary with the bins next door, but there you go.

Any further ideas very welcome.