Time to chill.
December gardens everywhere are now resting for the winter season. We too are headed into hibernation. But in December not all of our wildlife friends - or their custodians - were resting just yet.
ATTENTION: this newsletter contains bugs (invertebrate and spider photos).









A Windy Visit to the Mobile Garden
On 8th December, Jenny took up a kind invitation from Ysr - one of our volunteers - to tour the Mobile Garden in the Copper Box Arena, Stratford. Storm Darragh still lingered, but the wind and rain wasn’t enough to prevent a visit!
Read on for the rundown, in Ysr’s own words:
A Journey Through the Mobile Garden: Sharing Stories, Soil, and Smiles
What a delight it was to welcome Jenny from the Leyton Boundary Garden to the Mobile Garden this week! For those of you who don’t know, the Mobile Garden, formerly the Mobile Garden City, was previously located opposite Chobham Academy in the Queen Elizabeth Park area of Stratford. This was Jenny’s first visit, and I couldn’t wait to show her all that makes this garden so special.
A Walk Down Memory Lane
As we stepped through the gates, I kicked off our tour with the story of the Mobile Garden’s beginnings. The main idea of the garden is that it can easily be moved; it has already been moved to the bottom of Hackney bridge from its previous location on the opposite side of Chobham Academy Sports entrance. The Mobile Garden is, and is always, meant to be a temporary site before the site is developed.
Exploring the Beds
We strolled through the garden, starting with the perennial outer beds, where hardy plants like artichokes, stand as stalwart sentinels. I was also asked about how the plants are chosen and mentioned that is not in the volunteers’ hands.
Then it was onto the crop rotation beds, where seasonal vegetables rotate to keep the soil healthy and the crops thriving. Jenny was fascinated by the science behind this system—and maybe a little tempted to start her own rotation experiments!
I explained that the community beds are given to people from the local community to use the spaces as they see fit. These spaces, brimming, reflect the heart of the garden: people coming together to grow, learn, and share. The herb section provided a sensory feast, with its aromatic medley of basil, rosemary, lemon mint, and thyme.
Harvest and Hands-On Learning
The real magic happened at the Three Sisters beds, a planting system inspired by Indigenous agricultural traditions. Corn, beans, and squash grow together in a perfect symbiotic dance—each plant supporting the others. Jenny was very keen to know more about this ingenious method, marvelling at how ancient wisdom still shapes sustainable gardening today.
We ended our tour by showing Jenny where the pond is located and discussing how the wormery needs fixing. I also showed her the compost area and the newest addition to the garden—the food tumbler. With the abundance of leaves currently in the garden, Jenny mentioned this would be the perfect opportunity to create some leaf mould baskets, potentially similar to the ones at the Leyton Boundary Garden.
The visit wrapped up with smiles all around as Jenny harvested some winter lettuce and Swiss chard from the garden. It was wonderful to share the garden’s history and purpose with her, and I hope she left with fresh ideas and inspiration.
It was a thoroughly delightful visit and Jenny came away with lots of inspiration for the Leyton Boundary Garden, not least the art of crop rotation, Three Sisters symbiotic growing, and the Textile Garden.
Make sure to check out the Mobile Garden’s Facebook page, where you can find news and updates from Ysr himself on the goings on down at the Mobile Garden site.
Thanks again for your wonderful hospitality!
Look Up
If you’re not already in the habit of doing so, perhaps you might consider helping our fluffy feathered friends out with food to supplement their natural diets. At this time of year food is scarce for all wildlife, bar those who can find certain berries and seeded plants. Even in cities, birds can struggle, especially with high levels of competition (not least from the grey squirrels).
You can help wild birds by leaving food in areas where they would naturally forage; hanging bird feeders and suet balls, pellets or half coconut shells will attract House Sparrows, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Long-Tailed Tits, Great Spotted Woodpeckers and Starlings (and Ring-Necked Parakeets, if you’re in East London!).
Scattering dried mealworms and wild bird seed beneath plant stems and in flower beds will help Robins, Blackbirds, Magpies, Crows, Wood pigeons and European Jays, who prefer to forage on the ground.
There are lots of DIY bird feeding ideas to be found online, a great activity for children to get involved in that helps them learn more about birds.
And wildlife still needs access to water in the winter. Perhaps invest in a small bird bath or a DIY one. Any shallow dish works, and rainwater is always preferred.
Looking out for wildlife in winter is especially rewarding. With some native UK bird species in frighteningly steep declines in recent years, every little bit truly does help.
Look Down
Huddled within frosted-leaf fall and beneath the wind-scattered flowerpots, life lays quietly but very much still in abundance.
Continuing on from our work inspired by OrganicLea’s biodiversity work, Jenny popped down to the garden mid-December to take field notes on how our tiny friends are doing and not just dealing with the season, but very much making the most of it.



Beneath the leaves strewn into deep pockets by the wind alongside the bed edges are numerous Tiger worms, (also known as Red Worms, Red Wigglers, or composting worms). Some long, some short, all gathered together feasting on the fallen leaves and creating the most amazing leaf mould.
Leopard slugs huddle on overturned leaves during the day, before venturing out at night. The gardener’s friend, Leopard slugs eat fungi, decaying plant material, and other slugs. They don't damage healthy plants, but they do eat other slugs that can damage garden plants and vegetables.
Underneath one of the butler sinks, a striking and large Wolf Spider scuttles out. A solitary predator, they target common garden pests.
However you feel personally about the proximity of bugs, they truly can be a gardener’s best friend. A large aspect of our biodiversity plans for 2025 involve recreating habitat for these critters to support the natural ecosystem at work. We look forward to showing you our progress in coming months, and perhaps inspiring you to do something similar in your own growing spaces.


Look Back, Look Forward
Gardeners are generally fond of reflection; learning from experiments, trialling new crops and planting schemes, practising new skills, and better understanding the environment and microclimates in their particular growing spaces. We’re no different at the Leyton Boundary Garden, and we make a point of doing it formally at least once or twice a year. Like any garden anywhere, we enjoy the journey and evolution of our community space just as much as the results.
So, we’re curious; what would you like to see us explore or expand upon over the coming year? Do you have any ideas for us to try out? A new method of growing, or a particular crop worth a spotlight? How might we help people enjoy the community garden more than ever? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
As ever, please leave us a comment or email us at info@leytonboundarygarden.com if you have a particular idea that we’ve not covered in our poll.
Thinking Ahead
We’d like to share some important thoughts from our friends at the Waltham Forest Food Growing Network. We encourage all those interested to attend one of their open meetings to find out more and get involved.
What would Waltham Forest be like if we were able to grow food on any piece of public land? What would it look like if we were actively encouraged and supported to grow food by the council? And what if our borough bucked the trend and built an alternative food movement that was multiracial and led by working class people?
2025 is the year to answer these questions! The FGN are organising a campaign to try and achieve a Right To Grow in Waltham Forest and extend it to people that could benefit from it most. If you’re curious, want to get involved, or think this might be relevant for your group, come along to one of our open meetings:
Thursday 9th January, 7pm-9pm
The Hornbeam Centre, 458 Hoe Street, Walthamstow, London E17 9AH
Wednesday 15th January, 5pm-7pm
OrganicLea, 115 Hawkwood Crescent, Chingford, London E4 7UH
Warm Wishes
Finally, as we round off another year and we quietly fade into wintering, we all at Leyton Boundary Garden would like to thank you heartily for your company and your support. However you engage with the garden, whether in-person or online, regularly or not, your care and attention of our community space is so important and so gratefully appreciated. We hope that you too will use this season of fallow to fully rest and recuperate before the excitement and anticipation of Spring arrives.
The community garden will remain closed and this newsletter too shall enter a period of rest now until March, when we look forward to emerging again.
From all of us at Leyton Boundary Garden; we wish you a delightful festive season and a joyful start to an enriching 2025.