Cross Fire

Today I met a woman previously encountered only as @LewishamGardens who - I really dont quite understand this - is involved with the Chelsea Flower Show, or maybe a Fringe event and consequently has access to a load of plants afterwards to be re-distributed to Good Causes. She offered me plants. I said yes. It was also another chance to thin out the Agave jungle from my parents garden, so she got 4 Agaves for her thought. Chauffeured by J, we also picked up someone who is connected to Cafe Crema in New Cross getting plants for the little oasis that now flourishes in the cafe's back garden. After the torrential rain turned to drizzle we set out. Picking up K from CC and her 9 yr old son we arrived at St Mungo's, got thru the gates, got out of the car only to have A yell "Hide the Child!" Wow, I thought, she is worse than me. That is out there child-phobia... However it transpired that St Mungo's is a hostel for homeless people and they have regs barring children from the premises[!]. Securing T in the car, K and I then basically crammed in as many plants as we could... Should of hired a van...

After redelivering K, T and plants to their place, we went off to New Cross where my accomplice Wood met me trowel in hand and there we planted, hoping that no more drunks randomly pull stuff out, nor no more unknowing volunteers 'weed' out my plants in the interest of the wonderful yet one-season-only sunflower... Ahem. It was also yet another day in which we should have been secretly filming the response. This time a woman came up and demanded plant advice - going home AND returning with her floppy Calla Lily. I did tell her that while I was admittedly a great gardener I had killed 3 Callas previously as they are fussy buggers and not at all like Arum Lillies despite the resemblance. She would not go. We decided she had to repot and I gave her a pot from the St Mungo's hoard. We then had to dissuade her from taking soil from the raised beds for the purpose!

I might add to this a bit more, but for now some pics (terrible old Nokia - will try and reshoot with an actual camera...).

The Big Bed. Added in today: 1 x Cornus, 1 x Hardy Geranium, 2 x Alchemilla from St Mungo's, plus 1 x Arum Lily from my parents' bottomless pit of them. Previously I put in an Acanthus which is hanging on...

The other side of the big bed. Scene of the 'weeding' out of my 6 foxgloves, fennel and maybe the Acanthus - I hope it re-emerges.... Added in today 1 x dark leaved invasive violet thingy, 2 x Alchemilla and 1 Aquilegia. You can see Sunflowers that the Artmongers team planted there too - and loads of seedlings.

I dont know what I put in here today (second bed). Small grassy looking plants with little white flowers. Began the long task of tidying up the massively congested irises by chopping down the foliage (and thus putting all the energy into the exhausted rhizomes).

And the same pit here with the Aquilegia I planted a few weeks ago.

A quick visual of the other pits there (yes there are 5, its substantial). The most successful - so far with the pink foxgloves visible, also has 5 plants donated by my mum's neighbour that are some kind of wild carrot. The other one shows a very weak Acanthus above ground, but with a deep green shoot coming thru I think the roots are developing. There are loads of sunflower seedling here too.

 

This one has some Echinops thistles and a Verbena Bonariensis and foxgloves, struggling along. Oddly the echinops had a bit of an ant invasion. 

   

poker face

planted #kniphofia donated by Rosie in #NewCross + some rudbeckia rhizomes... and an #Acanthus... if no-one nicks it more to follow and pix to follow and updates on the GLORY that is Dog Kennel Hill to follow...

well a couple of weeks later and so far so good. So with the aid of converted colleagues Wood and Ayesha I added in 1 more Acanthus, 2 Aquilegia, 1 more Echinops and a Vinca. Next week Rosie and I are returning with the amazing California Poppy and Nasturtium seeds.

pit-stop

Opposite the Vineyard... so far so good...nothing nicked, no dog shit...no frost damage... we may have the first pimped pavement in Camberwell Grove.

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.

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).

camberwell grove, even

...and today  I also spied that the ground by the railway underpass/weak bridge in the middle of 'the grove' is wet enough to dig... and I have a spare sarcococca just waiting to be re-homed...

...and this today I re-homed it in that very place, testing out how crap the soil is [which is quite crap - its only the rain that has made it at all diggable, but sarcococca can cope with dry shade just fine] and also adding in 2 hollyhocks from the forest on dog kennel hill. I also did a bit more weeding and trimming up that hill and found that there are indeed hollyhocks sprouting the whole way up amongst the weeds...I tried to make it more obvious that they are there so hopefully no council workers will weed them out.

...and previously on camberwell grove I realised that there was a new-ish small tree-pit with bare soil not concreted over, so I added in euphorbia, an aquilegia and lychnis. Its opposite The Vineyard.

Expansion

 

A view of the patch - after the Chef Solaire and I cleaned it up and transplanted some of the Hollyhocks up the central line of the strip and planted more Crocosmia, Aquilegia, Euphorbia and Hardy Geraniums. You get the sense of the scale of the beast now. For the first time people driving by made positive remarks (instead of merely lewd ones).

 

I have planted some Sarcococca Confusa to try and a. get some winter sustenance for wildlife and b. protect this purple Cordyline (its coming back to life with all this rain... but this section is otherwise pretty barren).

The next picture shows some of the diverse plants a bit more clearly - the California poppies and Sisyrinchium and unusual Euphorbia. We took quite a few Hollyhocks up to Stories Road, but there are plenty more in need of another home.