So long, September
A fruitful month passes. Read on to see what we got up to in the garden during the month of September.
A feast for the senses
Our volunteers have enjoyed sharing a cornucopia of produce from the garden this year. They’ve been sharing some delicious – and sometimes surprising – ways to use our harvest.
The Leyton Boundary Garden recipe collection needs your submissions! Have you made something delectable using ingredients from the garden? We’d love to hear about them! Share your top tips in the comments section.
New season, new skills
image credits: Caroline Ede / Rawnak
Our Head Gardener, Alex, ran a series of workshops at the garden during September.
Attendees learned how to grow herbs, grow crops in containers, save seeds for next year’s sowing, and how to ferment and preserve their summer harvests.
It was a great way to understand how to enjoy our harvests beyond sowing and picking, and plan for the year to come. And it was a lot of fun along the way!
Thank you Alex for hosting these wonderful events! We all look forward to seeing our results. Like all our events, the workshops were free and open to all. Keep an eye out here for more.
Shed & Breakfast
After some sweltering, borderline-obsessive work during the summer, Jenny completed work on our beautiful Tea Shed, which is now open for everyone to enjoy. And it is ~glorious~!
Feel free to grab some refreshments on your visit; we have fresh water, teas, coffee, dairy and non-dairy milk, squash, soups, sweet and savoury snacks and treats to help fuel those physically demanding garden days (or to keep little ones happy).
We also have a lovely selection of board games, magazines and chalks available to use.
As always, we run and thrive on donations, so if you’d like to drop off some long-life goodies for the shed, get in touch or just pop along to see us on Saturdays.
Vertical living in the city
image credits: Jenny Hunt / Nicola Read
On the last weekend of September, we gathered all our cut-down, dried-out summer growth and tied it to a pole, as you do. Five poles, actually.
You could say that this was an artistic endeavour (and indeed, it was!). However, these lofty, scrappy, Wiccan-looking towers are - in fact - habitats for invertebrates during the colder months.
Inspired by friends Errol Reuben Fernandes and John Little at the @GrassRoofCo, these twiggy totems allow our beloved insect friends to shelter and complete their lifecycles undisturbed while the rest of the garden sleeps for the winter. They will also scatter what remaining seeds they have in the immediate area, helping to refresh the meadow for next year.
Once the garden is fruiting and in-bloom this coming spring, they’ll be added to the compost pile.
Why not try it in your green space? Let us know how you get on!
Our holistic community space
Collaborative Wellbeing Cafe/ Hornbeam Centre, William Morris Gallery art event
We want Leyton Boundary Garden to be a universally enjoyable, always inclusive space for all the members of our local community. If you are a local (or local-ish) group, and you would like to utilise the garden for a group event please contact us.
We’ve previously hosted school trips, painting sessions, walking groups and meditations, and would love to hear from you if you have an idea for a visit.
Planning ahead
Last Saturday, we all came together to collect our thoughts on the past growing season, and discuss ideas, big and small, for the year ahead.
We’ll be kicking off the quieter Winter season with some infrastructure projects. Saturday Gardening Club will continue to run until the end of November. Come along any Saturday, 10am-12pm, to get involved!