Just. NOTES // Community

Inspired by the sun to finally create a plant-filled seating area in my new yard, I trawled every community plant sale and charity-led open garden within a 5 mile radius – and what a haul.

Today is the day that I finally got my gardening mojo back (something to do with the sun, no doubt) and what timing with not one but three community plant sales and open gardens for me to trawl.

First up the Forest Gate Community Garden where if you don’t get there on the dot the lot is gone but I still managed to come back with a bronze fennel, three agapanthus, three English lavenders, a Verbena bonariensis, and a tansy for £15 (all money going back into maintaining and expanding the garden and its offerings). It’s such a beautiful and tranquil space I parked my bike and stopped a while to talk to friends and volunteers who devote so much of their time to making it the jewel of Forest Gate that it is. Community gardener Stephen Mason was also giving a container gardening talk around the pond so I coat-tailed onto that, dragonflies and bees dancing all around. They also had some new seats donated from somewhere, a brilliant design of back to back benches with a handsome crimson finish on the metalwork and an ingenious drainpipe planting of native grasses and wildflowers on the top edge.

Next was Jan Daniel’s amazing open garden at 42 Latimer Road, which really has to be seen to be believed for the incredible amount of plants that mingle within its reaches. I haven’t been for a few years and it’s even more fabulous than it was before if that is possible, the heady scent of roses and lilac and all around birdsong and butterflies adding to the sense that you have entered a secret haven that has been created just for you. Jan was also kindly selling plants with all money raised from a donation entry and the sale of cultivated specimens going to the Asha Trust to relieve poverty and hardship in Sri Lanka. I left this one – when I could finally drag myself away – with five Mexican daisies, a spearmint, a Himalayan balsam that had found its way into one of the pots, and six baby foxgloves ‘White Fox’, which are the loveliest ivory with a hint of peaches and cream. A total of £15 for that lot.

My final stop was Hackney Herbal over on Trowbridge Road in Hackney Wick, so thanks to a friend I pumped my bike tyres up and combined this element of my plant collecting with a cycle through the Olympic Park. I’ve long admired this initiative set up by Nat Mady but have never managed to visit so it was great to finally see the space – another sanctuary for plants and people bringing a wealth of herbs and plant knowledge to its visitors. The elder and the hawthorn were in bloom, the rosemary like a vast cloud around which specimens of Russian sage gathered, and under what I think was a tree mallow spread a delicate white-flowered, star-leaved collective of woodruff. I was going to leave with two more bronze fennels but had to go back for a woodruff as well so that lot added up to £15 too, with all proceeds going back into the business of growing herbs, teaching herbs, and gathering herbs for tea.

A quick trip to the local garden centre aka The Slate Yard when I got back to get some peat-free compost (although apparently the Forest Gate Community Garden are selling it too) – and maybe a few more baby herbs (low cost fillers such as thyme and chives, plus kitchen staples of marjoram, oregano, coriander and basil) and I’m finally ready to tackle those containers and get everything that I brought from my old pad mingling with my new plant friends. A good day’s work and in at under 50 quid.