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.

Lament of the Guerrilla Gardener

Checked in at the New Cross pits today, worrying that someone might have pulled up the lovely extra Rudbeckia I put in last week. Luckily its doing fine. The same cannot be said for the pits in general. There has been a disaster, probably from the hands of Lewisham Council.

Essentially for the first time in ages - at least a year, more than that probably, someone has come and 'tidied up'. This person or persons has temporarily cleared the pits of litter - not much there since I've done them twice in the last 2 weeks. All well and fine (for about a week). They have also sheared back the larger shrubs. Not hugely sympathetic, but ok. What is really tragic and upsetting is that they have pulled up a lot of plants, clearly thinking that they were 'weeds'. 

The missing plants include, at least: 2 x strawberries, 2 x Verbena Bonariensis, all the teasels, 1 Acanthus, 1 geum, 1 large hardy geranium, 1 x fennel, Crocosmia, self-seeded wild carrots, leucanthemum daisies. These are all bee-friendly (Obviously).

They have left large bare spaces around the 'weeded' remaining plants. This means that the soil will dry out much more quickly, and more importantly that the folk who drop litter here will just fill it all up with rubbish (yes, bitter voice of experience here I know). With a range of flowering plants there is a chance that people might just think 'oh, that's looks nice'. 

The big shrubs in the central beds have been wildly cut back. Ok. And the Bay and Fig are still there. But now they have no protection and are vulnerable to the plant vandalism and general fighting/rolling around on the plants that can happen in this neck of the woods. 

Is it worth it, Lewisham, or were you planning on actually planting something nectar and pollen-rich? Frankly I'd like to see you donate some decent plants, as well as better instruct your team. 

Cross Country

Finally I've been back to the pits of New Cross - aided and abetted by Rosie, guerrilla gardener of the highest order. Actually we started at 'her' patch  - the triangle of scrub land near the Sainsburys carpark now covered in wild flowers, chicory, lavender and hardy geraniums (pics to follow). I had pooh-poohed that patch as a lost cause of desolation a couple of years ago, but she has persisted, combatting Sainsburys' habit of mowing over the 'weeds' and got them to stop that nonsense. Apparently they even conceded to plant a tree in the middle of it, which is ok. Anyway she cleared away some of the poppies that had gone over and I brought down some more iris foetidissima and a pink hardy geranium. 

Next up - arms weighed down with the plants I've set by (planted up in heavy London clay), we set off for the pits near the bus stops and shops. This time we concentrated only on the first and largest pit - also the most filthy. Rosie spent over an hour digging out some very tenacious matting type of weed (thus giving the self-seeded sunflowers there some room to grow). 

I did the litter clear up as well as some rough and ready pruning back - of tatty Acanthus leaves, and of the unknown shrubs that were crowding 'my' Fig, Holly and Bay (all of which are otherwise happily growing). R planted a red hot poker, 2 batches of crocosmia, and a penstemon as well as some roots of chicory and rudbeckia. A very nice young man from the Yip Oriental Store gave us water for them. Really hoping no-one a. yanks them up, or b. has a fight on them. Despite the amount of time we spent - and great work was done - there's a lot more weeding and pruning to be done. In fact I went back a couple of days later and put in another day lily, another verbena, and did another whole sack of weeding and pruning. That said the middle 2 pits are doing quite well - they are overcrowded with self-sown flowers and tenacious matting weeds (still) but mostly good. 

Spot the Fig tree thriving in the middle here...

 The Holly and Bay are both doing great at the back of this pit.

The pit at the end nearest the London Particular gets a lot of vandalism (urination?) but the rudbeckia Rosie donated about 3 years ago is going strong.

Botanising the asphalt

New Year's Day 2016. Thought it was Time to revisit NX pits.  

Above: the biggest pit. The Acanthus has come into its own and is now swamping a hardy geranium which really should be moved. As a temporary measure I cut back a few leaves on the Acanthus. The Jack Daniels was underneath it, along with a load of other trash. Several blokes eyed that bottle and didnt dare pick it up. Yet. On the other side I just pulled out a few dead sunflowers and transplanted some of the zillion teasels. 

Below, in one of the middle beds, the Fig tree is making it! Obviously there should not be any leaves on it, but 2015 was the hottest year on record and December stupidly warm. This is the bed with the zillion teasels. I spread them around a bit, but there are still way too many. You can't quite see but the blue thistle - echinops - I planted maybe 2 years ago just beyond the irises is also bedding in well. They seem to be fussy at first and then invincible. Forgot to take a pic of the other side - I added in a pink japanese anemone and more transplanted teasels.

In the next pit along, below, you can see the leucanthemum doing nicely and also flowering 4 months later than normal. Just behind it is a small Holly tree I put in during the summer (its a great plant - but as it turns out is viciously prickly and we already have at least two in our new Telegraph Hill garden). On the right is the summer burnt but now recovering bay tree and in the middle a small hydrangea I rescued from a neighbour's bin [!].  

There's Rosie's red hot pokers growing away. Again these should be dug up and replanted really as it has rudbeckia all mixed up in it but its kind of weird enough doing basic public gardening here (with no-one speaking to me except to say 'where is the station?' - not one 'Happy New Year' or indeed much eye contact). Also, I'm not used to 7 degrees when it has been 13 or so for December, so my hands were actually getting cold. I added in the primrose from our garden today and noted the wild carrot seedlings.

Yeah. Rubbish. Two full binloads of bottles, cans, paper, pens, takeaways, and umbrella and a rank pair of shoes. The least fun bit of planting in NX. Euw. 

Southern Cross

With the tireless aid of Jan van Duppen (who also shot these photos), I went back to the New Cross pits to see what survived the heat, vandals, the sunflower domination and, again as it turns out, the over-enthusiasm of some of the sunflower volunteers, and also to plant some more perennials. I thought we were going to coincide with the sunflower team harvesting seeds for next year but they got there before us and stripped out the tatty dying annual planting. So, while Jan was fascinated with the degree of rubbish left in these pits (chicken bones, bottles, cans, plastic, pens...), I could tell they had actually been cleaned up and this was light traffic! 

So after several bags of rubbish removal, we tidied up the insanely congested iris rhizomes (I would still love to chop these up and redistribute them for an even vaster sea of iris...) and planted anew. Rosemary, Leucanthem (shasta daisy), Verbena Bonariensis and Japanese Anemone went in. I hope they stay... This was the spot where I planted wild carrots (which were doing great until the Sunflowers drowned them out) and an Aquilegia (hopefully that seeded before equally losing out to the yellow forest). The new plants are all tough, invasive and nectar rich - ideal for this location. They are also perennial - so year round greenery and less labour intensive in terms of care (in theory).

You can see in the corner of these two pits two of the Kniphofia (Red Hot Poker) that I planted with Rosie (out of about 8 that went in). Fingers crossed they make it too...

This pit is also the former scene of the Teasel that got yanked out and dropped by some idiot, twice. But the Hardy Geranium is surviving - there were also some Crocosmia here and Rudbeckia (which may have been 'weeded out' by team sunflower...).

Ending on a slightly more positive note, here are the survivors in the biggest pit:

an Acanthus, a Hollyhock, a Hardy Geranium (donated by @LewishamGardens) and some emerging shoots of an Arum Lily. The alchemilla and dogwood that @LewishamGardens also supplied did not survive the heat/sunflower domination, sigh. There were 2 other Acanthus planted that had re-emerged from previous over-zealous weeding but hopefully this one is sufficiently large not to be misrecognised.

Parting tips today:

when guerrilla gardening you can be more weed tolerant than in a private garden!

Why?:

• 'weeds' may be planted by someone else...
• only the super-invasive matting weeds are a problem, mostly other plants are green and have flowers and thus nectar. In the case of nectar-filled dandelions they help break up the soil too...

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. 

   

Wet Wet Dry

September, and a rude autumnal awakening. Its raining a lot. I decided to plant a few more geraniums, euphorbia and michaelmas daisies in Stories Road as its technically ideal planting weather. Such is the strength of the tree in the pit that digging small holes for these new plants soon found dry soil. But its looking pretty good. Talked to by one mad woman complaining about hating Shakespeare and one elderly good burgher who said "well done".

Storied Road

Stories Road doing pretty well given the heat and the tree dominating this pit. I added another clump of michaelmas daisies, an alchemilla and a hardy geranium.

 

and McNeil Road - revived by Nick with some unmissable plants and shorn by the council. This time they only dealt with the brambles and the stuff growing on the bridge. Shame really as brambles are very wildlife friendly...

Up the Junction

There is now a budding guerrilla garden on the corner of Mcneil Road and Camberwell Grove. The Sarcococca I added in 3 months ago are surviving and the Chef and C have gamely started adding in lots of donated stuff - brunnera, crocosmia, day lillies and more. I've added in 3 clumps of hardy geranium (donated from Clive of Grove Park open exotic garden fame) and cleared back some of the layering brambles to a. try and protect the young trees, b. give us more space to plant, and c. allow some space to get close to the fencing to plant nasturtium seeds. No need to totally clear the brambles because they are very wildlife friendly [flowers and fruit] - just a bit rampant when left to themselves. I really hope the nasturtiums grow as there's plenty of room for a great display.
pics to follow...

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.