Chelsea Fringe comes to Growing Gardens

Newsflash!

This week we are participating in the Chelsea Fringe - The Alternative Garden Festival. 

Our fabulous community gardener (and talented artist) Cressida Knapp has designed our piece, 'The Wandle Valley Girls" and many helping hands, large and small, from the local community have helped to bring them to life! 

These gorgeous girls will be on display until Sunday, so please do come and visit if you get the chance. 

Click here to have a look at the other Chelsea Fringe events in and around London

Praise Indeed!

Thank you 'One Sunny June' for your wonderful review of the farm, and garden in particular! 

"For me, the star attraction of Deen City Farm is the garden.

Almost entirely laid over to planting, a pushchair wide path weaves its way round the beds. Crops are co-planted with ornamentals, making it seem as though the ground just erupted with produce all by itself. Round every bend is a treasure to discover: a small gated pond; a play house tent; an outdoor classroom with tree trunk stools- all of them fitting in with the planting as gently as a birds nest or a spiders web, and all of them child sized. Then, round the last bend, the sweetest little hut, and in front of it a grass covered maze carved out of the ground. 

Deen City Farm garden is inspiring – the product of the ongoing love, creativity and toil of the local community, offered up for everyone."

Read the entire article here

https://onesunnyjune.wordpress.com/2014/05/17/deen-city-farm/ 

Amazing landscape thats just popped up

We thought you might like to see this amazing landscape in Wales which has appeared as a result of the recent weather we have been experiencing. To read all about it please click here...

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/gallery/2014/feb/21/prehistoric-forest-uncovered-by-storms-in-cardigan-bay-in-pictures

Chelsea Fringe at the Farm, 2nd-8th June

This year the gardens are taking part in the fantastic Chelsea Fringe Festival! Head shaped pots will have showy displays of vegetables. We need your help to make and plant, so keep an eye out for workshop dates and be apart of the installation. For more information click here to be redirected to the Chelsea Fringe Festival page.

Art in the Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This year has famously been one of the wettest winters since records began. We have made sure that all our pressing garden tasks have been completed; planting bulbs, pruning and keeping the birds seed stocked up. However long afternoons knee deep in  mud haven't appealed to our dedicated volunteers. As a consequence the garden staff stocked up with lots of arty treats and ran workshops in mosaic, drawing and jewellery making. A huge thank you to Charlotte for running the jewellery making workshop, the day was a great success. You can see more of Charlotte's treasures here.  Here are a few snaps of the lovely pieces that have come out of our craft sessions.

A blooming start to 2014

This week the first flowers of the year have unfurled to brighten up our days in the garden.... Spring can't be far away!

Happy New Year from Growing Gardens!

Here in the gardens we have been indulging lots of eating, drinking and merriment over our Christmas holidays, and hope you have too. 

 

But wait! It's not yet time to let go of that festive spirit.... Here are some photos of our wreath making party just before Christmas - a wonderful day with staff, volunteers and visitors enjoying a roaring fire, carols, mulled punch and mince pies :)

 

 

 

Preparing the 'ingredients'.....

 

 

 

   

                         

  .....and then it's time for a spot of fire craft! Nothing like something hot and mulled on a chilly day.

                    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                       

 

 

 

On to the serious business of making the wreaths.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

aaaand all finished - don't they look beautiful?

(the wreaths aren't too bad either!)

 

 

 

                 

 

                

 

 

 

So all that is left to say now is.....

Happy New Year!!!!

from Lucy and Cressida 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome Cressida

The fabulous Cressida joined us in the gardens this week 

as our new Community Gardener. She has already been hard at work

with our lovely volunteers - time for winter clear up in the garden!

a little bit about Cressida from Cressida......

I think I must have been a cat in a past life, as there is nothing I like more than being right in the middle of a flower patch. When I was a kid the garden was my domain, with the lawn covered in a complicated circuit of adventure (a climbing frame that I tied to a slide, that went into a paddling pool, with a see-saw waiting on the other end so you could spin dry after the workout) and that excitement of gardens has stayed with me ever since. My first gardening job was at Brighton Marina where I really got to grips with hanging baskets (all 300 of them), then worked in a graveyard where I toiled hours away delicately strimming the grass away from headstones. More than anything I loved the fresh air, whether it was boiling hot or pelting with rain, but I did miss working with people so I decided to work as a community gardener. I’ve spent the past five years doing so at Mudchute Farm and hopefully taught a few folk to do the basics like pruning (all together now, remove the dead, damaged and diseased). I’ve also been trained in ‘risky play’ and can legitimately teach kids how to use knives for whittling, and make fires for food. I’m delighted to be amongst a new landscape and look forward to exploring all the corners of Deen City Farm, and get to know all the staff and volunteers who really are the backbone of the place.

Favourite Colour - Red

Favourite Garden – Carrie Hepple’s Garden (fictional) and King Henry’s Walk Garden Islington (real)

Favourite Vegetable – Corn on the cob

Favourite Musician – Neutral Milk Hotel

Favourite Plant – Erigeron karkinskianus

Favourite Bird – Big Bird…oh no hang on that’s fictional again  so I’ll say House sparrow

Autumn Has Arrived

The last couple of weeks here in the gardens we have really been enjoying all these beautiful autumnal colours!

 

  

 

Alex has been a star with helping to keep the leaves at bay.....

 

 

 And of course the chard is still going strong!!! Pretty much the only veg left standing in our garden beds :)