Southwark 1 Lewisham 0

Gardened today with visiting celebrity Tofiq Pasha and Naheed his partner - and given a. the uncertain status of plants in the NX pits and b. that I haven't been back to Dog Kennel Hill for over a year, I decided on the latter as our locale. 

We planted at least 5 Verbena Bonariensis, 2 geum, 1 primrose, 1 strawberry, 1 hardy geranium, 1 Agave (and its offshoots) and 1 Alchemilla in a section almost as if it was prepared for us - albeit with some rock hard ground (suppliers: my garden and my parents' garden). It was really interesting to hear Pasha's stories about other compost conditions and his concern at my weeding and clearing! We also scattered a pack of bee-friendly wild flower seeds (thank you Liz!). After warning these troops for the day that it was likely to be a mess, actually the whole strip was really not bad! The star plants are currently: Iris, Rosemary, Acanthus, Artichoke [thank you Giovanni], Euphorbia, Fennel, Leucanthemum, Echinops, Vinca - and eventually after some strategic weeding around Hollyhock seedlings I found 3 surviving Red Hot Pokers.  I'm not sure what the weeds are [tall dandeliony things, tall probably pink flowering things]: they are ok - good for pollinators, not matting and easy to pull out where they are swamping more desirable plants. But the bad ones pretty much were not there [infernal grass, huge thistles, sticky sweethearts]! 

It is supposed to rain this afternoon. Yes please.

All of that was written then. Here, belatedly, are some of Pasha and Naheed's photos of our guerilla determination to plant. You can't really tell but it was hot and muggy.I've been past a few times and the Agaves are doing well. In the future people will make Tequila on Dog Kennel Hill.

View from the crossing: not exactly Gertrude Jekyll, but it is green.

Guerrilla Transplant

I've moved. No longer in walking distance of Dog Kennel Hill - but I'm still on a bus route and cant bear for it all to go to rack and ruin. Like the last 2 or 3 years we've had a plant-friendly lush spring followed by a month or more of no rain with hot sun. On the plus side the Acanthus is now established enough to flower - and the artichoke I planted last year also flowered. Once again, the tough plants have still fried on this very dry strip of land. So, I made use of a garden mag offer for 25 free lavender plants for the cost of postage and got zillions of little ones - gamely potted on by my mum. Hopefully they will bed in and do better with climate change. In July, aided and abetted by troops old and new, I went to assess the damage and we cut down the dead and dug up the grass (which is the main suffocating weed now - even drowning out the michaelmas daisies). We planted lavenders and a pink yarrow along with a couple more Agave. Sadly no pics but lots of thankyous from drivers passing by (including a friend from Kent who I had told about our endeavours and who randomly drove by just as we were all hard at work).

2 months later and I went back solo and dug up another 3 bags of grass/weeds, planted more lavender, yarrow and a couple of red hot pokers. 
pics to follow.

Hot bed

When I was a child growing up in Sussex we spent all 'summer' hoping that at some point the temperatures would hit 70 degrees, ideally coinciding with a weeks holiday in Cornwall. It rarely did (apart from in 1976).  This is the second year in a row my patch has fried due to No Rain. Yes, ironically I am writing this after the weather has broken and we have had quite a bit of rain for a day, off the back of Hurricane Bertha. But the point remains. No rain in June, hardly any in July. Deep fried guerrilla gardens... And so it was that like last summer I met up with a lovely young man for a GG interview, this time Jan van Duppen who is studying at the OU and in exchange - tho' he needed little encouragement - we went to Dog Kennel Hill and chopped down 3 bags of dried out Hollyhocks, Michaelmas daisies and most of it really.

pre-trim (all Jan Van Duppen's photos)

I did have 2 new shorter type Verbenas and 2 experimental Cleomes, a foxglove and a couple of Lychnis to go in, but to see any improvement we need more of the wet stuff. We left a few of the teasels standing for structure (and they may still have seeds in the flower heads, which birds like to eat). On the day we two blondes needed to be rescued by my partner armed with suncream and bottled water. It was filthy hot work. Jan seemed to attract a doubting Thomas who was apparently asking who we were, implying we had no authority to be doing such things, which was true. Sadly he didnt feel strongly enough to come closer to actually have a real conversation about it, which I would have enjoyed.

Here's the short Verbena.

and here's the fennel...

I returned yesterday and cleared up 2 bags more and added in 2 more foxgloves, 1 more Lychnis and 2 Alchemilla. 3 people thanked me from their cars which was nice. Lots of the Ox-eye daisies are growing back, and the bedded-in fennel and irises have all coped very well, but otherwise it is pretty barren. Like last year I know it will green over in a lovely lush way within about a month (assuming more rain - difficult to assume!). If not this spot will be getting some Agave Americana and be renamed California.

Troop recruitment

  

For all those interested in helping out or developing your own guerrilla team. This is the main patch I have been working on, now fully recovered from the summer's drought and beautifully green, if full of weeds. The pics are from October. It runs up Dog Kennel Hill adjacent to Sainsburys in East Dulwich. In the middle of a busy road with Night Bus traffic and getting full sunshine, it is a warm patch that can protect vulnerable plants in winter but also seriously dries out and the soil quality is pretty dire. Hence the plants that the council apparently once planted here mostly died and now they only properly manage about 4 long rectangles of land with seasonal bedding (the kind of stuff that is colourful year-round but is nectar-lite and utterly pointless if you are an insect or a bird). The stuff I plant must be tough, ideally self-seeding (e.g. California Poppies) or invasive (e.g. Euphorbia) in ordinary gardens and have flowers that contain pollen. I am much more weed tolerant here - unless it is smothering other plants I let them be (things like dandelions are full of pollen anyway). I haven't planted any veg because of the quality of the soil - it would need serious improvement (bags of compost dug in), and due to the time available I have to tend it. However Giovanni (from Antennae) has given me a wonderful artichoke and I do want to try that in this patch (they always succumb to snails in my garden - but this dry patch is virtually mollusc free).

  

My ambition for Dog Kennel Hill is to plant the entire strip that the council neglect - about 3/5ths done! I have a whole load of plants waiting to get planted here so any help would be grand. I can supply a few extra pairs of gloves and waste bags, though I only have one trowel now (unless anyone wants to wield a spade...).

I've also started adding stuff in to the raised pits near the bus stops near Reyna restaurant in New Cross Road, so very near Goldsmiths, piggy-backing on the stupendous sunflower project run by New-Xing and Artmongers. This is necessary - I hate empty/neglected plant pits plus the bee crisis continues unabated, but it is more vulnerable to theft and damage than DKH. Hence I'm thinking thistle type plants like Echinops and teasels.

Future-wise, everytime I go past Peckham Fire Station on the 171 or 436 I look at the 5 or so concrete planters outside it that are empty! I'd love to plant stuff there - like some of the Hollyhocks that selfseed wildly on DKH. That would need some donated compost however, and probably someone with a car!

As long as the ground is not frozen or covered in snow, we can still plant...

Patch worked

Well. The Dog Kennel Hill patch was fried in the 4 weeks of 30degrees and no rain. In spite of 2 mad dashes with buckets and assembled friends a lot of the plants really suffered. However in the last couple of weeks there has been regular rain so I risked planting some more stuff - the usual suspects, lychnis, alchemilla, leucanthemum. More excitingly, I met up with a very sweet young man doing an anthropology degree and interested in guerrilla gardening and together we planted in 4 Verbena Bonariensis next to the irises and chopped down all the browned stems of the hollyhocks, daisies and everything else singed and burnt. A lovely middle-aged Asian man simply said 'thank you' when he was waiting by the traffic lights.
It looks a bit desecrated but give it a few weeks and this patch will rock again.

 

...and here is the petit pit in Camberwell Grove - the one place that was close enough to maintain through the heat. Plus the people from the Vineyard have helped out. Subsequently some vile person [a plague on them] pulled out one of the verbenas by the roots and just left it there. I've replaced it with small ones.  

spring forward

Lots to report. Firstly it is actually behaving like spring and thus everything is growing beautifully. Minus the plant that was stolen from Mcneil Road... Tragically I think it might have been someone seeing us team dig that spot and realised there were some interesting plants going in not 'just' weeds... I wish a plague of vine weevils on them. They nicked the bigger of the Sarcococca Confusas that I planted in January. No more of them for easy to get at spots. Actually they have struggled in Dog Kennel Hill so maybe I'll just keep them all.

Dog Kennel Hill is entering its glory days... I've just added in more Alchemilla Mollis, Lychnis and Hardy Geraniums, and weeded out 3 bags of smothering stuff. I notice that one of the Irises I planted out last summer is coming into flower! And the bronze fennels in between them are surviving. Some yellow and white daisy things are in flower plus the odd bit of vinca, and of course the euphoria of the Euphorbia. There's a bit of a task ahead to sort out section 4 which has large clumps of Hollyhocks on the edges, which is not good: they need to keep the centre line. I've got a whole load of Japanese Anemones growing in pots: a few weeks and they'll find join this patch. More pink alas, but bee-friendly.

Stories Road treepit is also triumphant

Camberwell Green raised pits next to the former job centre is ok. That has the driest, dustiest soil. But maybe the mint was pulled up from there too? The game survivor is Golden Rod (Solidago) and I think some shasta daisies (Leucanthem) plus, and of course! the hollyhocks... I added in some Giant Russian sunflower seeds and some small friends of Borage.

Camberwell Grove petit pit is still going strong

pocket spring

 

Stories Road is looking great! almost - maybe everything - has survived and will soon be putting on some height (and thus be noticeable all the way up and down Grove Lane). I have also added some California Poppy seeds so watch out for the blue grey filigree of their foliage. Maybe the Chef Solaire and I should stick a planting plan to the back of the road name.

Dog Kennel Hill is also SPLENDID. If you count the spaces between the trees as sections then there are 5 sections available for guerrilla sensibility. I have noticeably planted sections 1 and 2, plus started in on 4 (there was a logic to that at the time involving a bad weed patch in 3 plus some tragic tomatoes that some well-meaning person had added in and left to fend for themselves).

Section 2 got some more Lychnis, Hardy Geranium and Aquilegia yesterday. 

Section 4 - in which the 3 Fennel plants, previously added in between the irises, are still making it (they are great gg plants as long as they get watered until established). I added in 2 Alchemilla either side of the lavender and a largish pot of Michaelmas Daisies.

No pics yet, but the tree pit in Camberwell Grove, opposite the Vineyard, is also surviving enough to get more plants - Michaelmas Daises, Leucanthemum and Creeping Jenny.

an earthworm of one's own

Brought back a bucket full of leafmould from my parents' garden, heaving with worms and deposited them on the hard dry soil of Dog Kennel Hill. The leafmould pile is about 10ft square and I have been helping out with ferrying it across the garden to be dug in prior to veg planting. Its like worm spaghetti. So, I indentured them to make my patch more diggable!

iron council

Ok it is not mild. Really not mild. I can see bulbs popping through and plants I want to divide but its too damn cold. I have however bribed a friend into helping me plant/weed some of my patches (little does she know) in exchange for seeds and plants.

I stopped by the Dog Kennel Hill patch yesterday and saw that the council have done their random dig. I suppose its ok, most of my stuff is still there...Brave Aquilegia making it through... and the large and more identifiable clumps of Escholzia [sp?] aka California Poppies are there though some small casualities have been 'thinned out'... There is a Yucca in trouble however, if anyone who actually reads this has a stake it would be great if you could forcefully prop it up otherwise someone is going to remove it (the plant is horizontal and poking out into the road).

Beating the Weeds

Its 2013, I finished my book, its ridiculously mild, still, though not actually raining again. So, I went to the Dog Kennel Hill patch with gloves, recyclying bag and plants. I added in 3 x bronze fennel, 1 x euphorbia robbiae, 1 x euphorbia wulfenii and a hardy geranium - and did two whole sacks of weeding... J had to stop by and bring the second sack along with a second set of gloves because the first set got sopping wet. Mainly I pulled out the stuff I thought was couch grass but is probably trefoil, groundsel and sodden leaves. The whole patch is looking really healthy in spite of the carpet of weeds. The Euphorbias are all doing really well. With all the rain the Acanthus is finally bedding in to the otherwise hard soil. The California Poppies seeded widely so they will look extra great this year. I am rather amazed that the Lychnis does not seem to have seeded even though it does so willy-nilly in my parents' garden which is why I have some to guerrilla garden. The Hollyhocks remain alarmingly prolific. At some point I want to transplant a lot more of them up the hill and perhaps in St Giles Churchyard gardens.

I did check in to make sure the plants I added to St Giles were still doing ok and yes indeed, 2 Arum Lillies and an Acanthus.

Mystery Plant Revealed

Ok. Maybe not _that_ exciting however I think the prolific blue leaved plant that I have planted about 4 clumps of up the Dog Kennel Hill patch is Sisyrinchium (which apparently means 'pig-nose'). As suspected it is very hardy and drought resistant. So far my own clump - in situ for about a year - has not flowered, but my neighbour mentioned yellow spikes. Whatever, its a really useful structural shape and perfect for the patch.