A Brief History of Time
As the nitty-gritty of running a community space take centre-stage, our newsletter has quietly sat on the benches. We thank you for your patience - here's a little window into what we'd been doing.
The Headlines
Well, crikey, it’s been an incredibly busy few months. As anyone involved in a small volunteer-run endeavour will know, sometimes the day-to-day simply leaves little room for much else. So much has happened at the community garden, and it’s well past time to share.
Here’s a slightly short but sweet summary of some of the recent goings-on at the garden since we last spoke, from September 2025 to May 2026:
September 2025:
The community garden was teeming with grasshoppers and butterflies, and eager hands enjoyed picking all sorts of mini-snacks. We had some wonderful harvests to share; cucamelons, beans and grapes were thriving, the apples kept coming, and we even had cantaloupe melons in the polytunnel. The tomatoes were so successful that we had to put out a call for the local community to please take them!
The rain was dramatic, and nourished the weary end-of-summer earth in heavy sudden blasts. The precious Ivy Mining bees returned to the park next door. Old crops were cleared and the ground prepared for new - new parsnips and winter greens were incoming!
October 2025:
The colours of October were hard to beat! Flushes of red and orange, pale yellow, bright pink, dusty blues and dappled hues. The sweet potatoes were harvested in abundance! A true success, with their plentiful yields of bright magenta bodies. The chayote - or Chow Chow - fruited brilliantly to our delight! The quince and medlars were adorned with ripe fruits, and new seeds were sown in freshly prepared beds - brassicas, winter greens, kale and much more.
We welcomed local primary school children to the garden, and they were enthralled with the food and flowers on show. They were encouraged to explore and ask questions, and take in the sights, sounds and smells. We discussed the wildlife living in the garden, and the bug hotel was a big hit! We look forward to hosting more school visits in coming seasons.
November 2025:
As the season chilled, in November we still had many days of sunshine left to enjoy the fruits of our labours. The sweet potatoes finally finished, having been one of our best crops in late summer. The medlars were belted, revealing a sweet, date-like quality. As some of our raspberries were still fruiting for little fingers to reach for.
The Large White caterpillars seemed to be enjoying our brassicas, as is always the case. As we found more and more invertebrates getting ready to hide for the colder months to come - red wriggler worms, wood lice, true bugs and beetles, centipedes and huge spiders.
We said goodnight to the artichokes for another year, and good morning to new lettuces, onions and winter greens. We swept more delicate crops in winter fleece, and hoped for the best over the coming months.
We held our Annual General Meeting, where we discussed the year past; our highs and lows, caught up on project progression and held an open space for our collective wishes for 2026 for the community garden.
December 2025 - February 2026:
Some well-deserved fallow time for the volunteers, as we enjoyed the settling of the season and had time to enjoy the memories of 2025.
Repairs and general maintenance of the site were done when weather allowed, as the rest of the soil slept.
Meanwhile in volunteers’ kitchens and greenhouses within the local community, new plants were being gently tended to start strong in the new growing year at the community garden.
March 2026:
Our Spring Reopening was here! Over the winter, there had been quiet bustling in preparation for the community garden’s reopening on the first weekend of March.
We had snacks and light refreshments, craft activities for families using natural materials with Caroline at The Castle Play Space, and everyone got their hands working on seed-sowing new crops and flowers.
We set in motion our research plans for our new Food Forest area in the old wildflower meadow, asking our visitors what they would like to see growing there.
The Hairy-Footed Flower Bees and honeybees were back, bouncing around the new Spring blooms.
The reopening was a joyful day, but the rest of March was equally wonderful. The classic seed starting season continued with new life everywhere, and we had a wonderful selection of quality seeds from Tamar Organics and Chiltern Seeds, as well as our wonderful local Community Apothecary. There was a palpable surge of energy and hope for the new gardening year.
A key moment for our Food Forest area happened just a week after reopening, with groundbreaking works completed to remove the huge concrete pad beneath the soil. This would allow us the root space to grow trees and other larger plants, have better water retention over the hotter months, and keep the ground at a more steady temperature all year round.
April 2026:
April brought with it the sunshine and fresh breezes. We met new wildlife every day; bee flies, ladybirds, solitary bees and parasitic wasps, all helping to keep the community garden in a fine balance.
Some of our younger volunteers finished their plant markers they’d made at the reopening event, and aren’t they gorgeous! The new labels were used in the garden wherever those plants resided.
Growing beds that had been covered during winter were prepared and mulched for new crops of all kinds - tomatoes, beans, raspberries, and a multitude of sunflowers.
And the Food Forest groundwork began in earnest, with forks, shovels and a lot of heaving and ho-ing.
May 2026:
In May we held two Plant Sales to raise funds for the community garden, and you all came out to see us in droves!
We had herbs, veg and flowers galore to take home - tomatoes, peas, beans, cucumbers, cucamelons, pollinator-friendly perennials and annuals, sage, rosemary, chives, and goodness know’s what else, I can’t even remember. Both sales combined helped to raise almost £1000 for the community garden - an incredible amount that allows us to continue doing what we do in truly meaningful ways for the rest of the growing season. Thank you for your local support.
We also made great headway in the Food Forest, creating our Hugelkultur mounds, and carving out the sunken path. The effect of lowering the pathway amongst the undulating mounds was magical, creating height and mystery as you journeyed through the space. We started planting up the mounds with a green manure, a mixture of trees and perennials found elsewhere in the community garden, and plants donated especially for the project.
We also moved our existing wooden structure to the centre of the plot and created a seated sheltered space for visitors to enjoy, reusing the unearthed concrete lumps to create a low shepherd’s wall, making it physically cooler and mentally more cosy!
To Be Continued…
Stay tuned for our next newsletters, telling you all about our experiences over the summer months, in what has been the hottest summer since records began (as I write this, we have just entered our 5th heatwave of the summer and have a hosepipe ban solidly in place).
Stay cool out there!
