Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “2025”
On Thursday and Friday we had an inch of rain, brought in by storm Amy. All around the garden are sycamore helicopters, and scattered along the pavement of Earlham Grove, which made me think how wasteful nature can be. Those on the pavement are being trodden in, and will either be swept up by the roadsweeper and end up in …
The apple tree, given to us by the Irish pensioners, is in bloom. Quite shockingly so, as April is the month for apple blossom. This is five months on. Though, September is very like April in terms of temperatures and day-length. It seems the tree has picked up on these signals, perhaps enhanced by the dryness back in April. It …
There’s a plant sale on, and we are doing well as I arrive. By the time I leave there’s not much left to sell which is the aim. The tables are outside the garden, and there’s three or four volunteers chatting and selling plants. I wander into the garden; it’s pretty busy. Children playing with Lego, the mud kitchen is …
We had a lot of rain yesterday. It started in the early morning. I can’t say when. I popped into the garden at 7.30 am, holding my umbrella. I had one task and that was to see the rain gauge. It registered 10 mm, a satisfying amount after a very dry month. Just 4 mm in total before this, which …
The wild flower bed is past its best but we still have California poppies, wild carrot, hedge mustard, corn marigold, flax, purple poppy, white campion, cornflower, borage and teasel. The most prominent is the wild carrot, its flowers somewhat like cow parsley, but when they go to seed, they curl into green, miniature birds nest type structures. It’s the first …
The garden had a stall at Forest Gate Festival today, held yearly on Osborne Road. Kate brought a bin of soil and showed some soil science. Wooden medallions were painted, many by children and some adults too. And we had a plant sale, mostly with plants donated by Underleaf. The owners of Underleaf, a couple, moved into the new flats …
Today is the longest day of the year, 16 hours and 39 minutes between sunrise and sunset. The sun rose at 4.42 am and will set at 9.21 pm. As well as being the Summer Solstice, it is Midsummer’s Day, halfway through the year. We get the long day of the summer solstice because the earth’s axis is at an …
Volunteers are the heartbeat of the garden. The garden can’t run without them. They meet and greet, they do lots of work: planting, clearing up, watering – and keep the place going. So on Sunday, 18 May we had a volunteer session. It was planned to be informative and enjoyable, and to help volunteers get to know each other. The …
Around 70 people attended our VE Day celebration. It began with Peter Williams telling us about Newham during the war: the evacuation of children, the phony war, the blitz, the prisoner of war camps on Wanstead Flats – one for Italians, the other for Germans. There were anti aircraft guns on the Flats too and barrage balloons. Forest Gate suffered …
The Cherry blossom has gone from our two large cherry trees. First on the white blossomed tree where it had come earlier and then on the pink blossomed tree. The fall on the pink tree was like snow. Outside the garden, under the tree, was a large pool of blossom. I saw it at 7.30 one morning, a pristine, pinky …
