March-ing On
Full of the joys of Spring, the community garden was buzzing with the hum of eager volunteers and new life when we reopened the gates.
Our Spring Reopening Event
On 1st March 2025, Leyton Boundary Community Garden reopened its gates for the new growing season. The local community joined together for the first Saturday Gardening Club session of the year, celebrated the garden and enjoyed some tasty delights.
We welcomed esteemed award-winning landscape designer Miria Harris and her lovely assistant Rae, to learn about her and Garden Designer Humaira Ikram’s workshop at the William Morris Gallery, “Paradise Gardens”. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet Miria in person, and to understand the importance of form and pattern, journeys and sensory delights sought within Islamic garden design.
There was much interest gathered and the workshop the following week was a wonderful success! We’re long-time avid fans of the William Morris Gallery and their namesake, and hugely look forward to working together again in future.
Day One of Gardening Club 2025 and there was much to get stuck into already. Everyone got their hands dirty and helped out, the Spring sunshine fuelling our spirits and endeavours.
Already there were crops to harvest, share and take home to enjoy: artichokes, fresh rosemary, and winter greens.
And aside from the homegrown goodies, the assortment of party food and refreshments was a huge hit, and we were cleaned out, making for an easy cleanup at the end of the day!
What a fantastic start to the community garden for 2025. It was such a delight meeting with old friends and welcoming new ones. We’re excited to see what we can do together this year!
All hands on deck
March is always a busy time in the gardening calendar; the promise of so much to come, renewed by the warmer earth. Many of our crops ready to harvest now had been sown in the colder earlier months. Winter greens like lettuces and lovage, deliciously fresh and tender. The beans and rhubarb were growing strong, onions and shallots sprouting up everywhere outside, and new seeds were sown in the polytunnel.
This year promises to be greener and more lush than ever!
Full-circle seed sowing
This March, we sowed our seeds using compost gathered and refined directly from our cold-composting bays. It’s such an important milestone for us as a community garden to be able to take a huge step forward in being a self-sustaining project. The feeling of coming full-circle is so exciting.
We’ve learned much about compost over the years, and about how to make it work in the particular setup and conditions we have in the community garden. The sense of fulfilment setting our new crops for the year in our own homemade compost was exquisite.
Here’s to more homegrown everything!
Hairy-Footed Friends
Many of the bulbs in our planters have been established for a few years now, and as such have naturalised rather well. March was beckoned in with a flush of fresh green shoots from the crocus, daffodils and anemones all over.
With the buds came the bees; one of the first bees to appear in UK Springtime is the Hairy-Footed Flower Bee. Active between February and June, these native solitary bees are distinctly different between the males and females: males have a pale yellow face and hairy tufts on their legs, and females are often mistaken for bumblebees due to their larger, rounded black furry bodies and orange fuzzy back legs.
They can be seen buzzing loudly, darting around flowers from early Spring, often with their long tongues out. The male Hairy-Footed Flower Bee can be seen chasing the females, multiple bees zipping around a female a common sight.
One of my personal favourite signs of Spring, we love seeing these bees thrive in the community garden.
Until next time, we all at LBG hope you’re enjoying the sunshine, spring greenery and your respective renewed social spaces. So much to look forward to - let’s get growing!