Friday 19 April 2013

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...

Tuesday 16 April 2013

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.

Monday 15 April 2013

Human Bee-ing

All the plants I use in guerrilla planting are a. tough, b. a bit invasive, c. will likely self-seed and d. most importantly, they are bee-friendly. You all should know by now that bees are in serious decline worldwide. This is obviously crap for the bees. It is also deadly for the eco-system of which we are a part. Bees pollinate flowering crops. They are intrinsic to our food supplies. We _need_ Bees. Bees need flowering plants that actually have pollen in them (so dont bother with Begonias or Buzy Lizzies or most over-bred bedding plants that produce colour but no pollen). But feeding the bees is not enough. Returning hedgerows to the land cut up by the monocrop culture of Big Agriculture is not enough. World-renowned magazines like Nature have been reporting the deadly and long-lasting effects of particular poisons called Neonicotinoids on bee colony collapse (Bayer and Syngenta are the two big brands associated with making insecticides containing neonicotinoids).

For us this means two things. Firstly stop using pesticides in your own gardens. It is pointless providing pollen rich plants if you also poison the bees along with aphids (and poisoned bees will return to their colonies thereby transmitting the poison).  And secondly keep alert to the stellar EU effort to ban neonicotinoids from not just personal use (and bees do not respect 'private gardens') but crucially mass agricultural use. At the moment the UK and Germany are trying to block this ban (countries that are the base of Bayer and Syngenta). Sign every petition you can in support of banning neonicotinoids.

Here is one to pressure our MP's to ask Owen Paterson to support the proposed ban. The Buglife website gives example wording. 

A small start is to buy organic food - that will support smaller producers, and will categorically not be grown using chemicals including pesticides.

Sunday 14 April 2013

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.