Blossom time

Spring is such a wonderful season, the time when everything in the garden bursts back into life. And although this cold April has slowed things down in the garden it’s wonderful to now see everything burgeoning, especially the fruit trees in blossom. A sure sign that it’s time to start some serious gardening!

Pea shooters

On Saturday 24 April we joined Good to Grow 2021, a weekend of celebration for community gardens to kick start this year’s growing season. It was beautiful sunny Saturday, and throughout the morning our gardeners worked in small groups sowing seeds to germinate indoors at home and plant out in their gardens in May, or peas shoots to grow on windowsills. Extra seeds were also sown to germinate in our polytunnel, so we should have lots of seedlings in May!

Some we had already sown

As well as nurturing plants we’ve also been doing lots work behind the scenes to keep our garden growing, such as our project to install composting bays. In response to last year’s compost shortage during lockdown, Lambeth Council is allowing us to build three bays on the site adjacent to our growing space which will enable us to recycle all our garden waste.

Plan for the composting bays

The growing medium produced in the bays will be used on our beds and made available to other gardening groups. Fingers crossed the funding application submitted for this project will be successful!

With lockdown now easing, we’ve also been optimistically planning workshops and events for the coming months. With the lighter evenings, our Wednesday gardening sessions have now started, from 5 to 7pm.

Our Monday 55+ Grown-up Gardening session will start up again on Monday 10 May, from 2 to 4pm. A chance to get outdoors and meet people or just sit by the pond and while away little time tadpole watching.

Sit and ponder

Back by popular demand, Diana Linskey will run a Chutney Making Workshop Saturday for us on 17 July. We have also invited London Freedom Seed Bank to facilitate a seed saving workshop with us at the beginning of October, date to be confirmed.

Our big event each year will be our annual harvest feast, which sadly couldn’t take place last autumn because of Covid restrictions. On Saturday 25 September, we are hoping to make up for last year’s loss with an extra-special Feast & Car Free Day. As well as lots of feastilicious food made from our homegrown produce, there’ll be gardening, nature and wildlife activities, and hopefully animals form Vauxhall City Farm – if we can cover the hire cost.

Goodness me!

One of the ways we raise money at BBA is from our Saturday morning stall, filled with goodness from in our garden. Generous donations for our produce helps keep our garden growing, adding financial support to projects such as our composting bays. To cover the costs of our Feast & Car Free Day celebration we have launched a GoFundMe page in the hope that local businesses and residents will support this community event. If you would like to make a donation, please click on this link.

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Our community garden is a wonderful place learn and share gardening skills as well as meet and make friends. For more information about taking part at Bandstand Beds click on this link to our website, email ccbandstandbeds@gmail.com or stop by our produce table on Saturdays between 10am and midday to chat to one of our members.