The Garden at
Chenies Street Chambers
2002- 2003

The Reason Why: why you should start a garden
(and how to get large pots and plants home)

recommended plants for your garden
low-maintenance  or no-maintenance
and preferably edible (to make them safe for children)

suitable materials for large pots for your garden

how to start a garden with very little money

Bid (including costs) for first garden grant

Wording of major grant application (successful)

bid for small grant application (successful)

reliable stockist: organic herbs - Betty's Herbs From Heaven

the problem of covering hard surfaces

A Designated Green Area Sign for your Garden

how to farm moss

in shady areas: moss good/mould and black slime bad

how to sweep hard surfaces effectively

why you shouldn't use chemicals or bleach in the garden

WHY WORMS (AND WHY SHOULD WE COMPOST)?

where to order worms

where to order other organic products for the garden

where to order solar panels, natural paints, energy alternatives, etc





¤ GOOD SUPPLIERS OF GARDEN MATERIALS:

It brings the community together,  it adds a simple way for people who can't maintain plants to have communal responsibilities, it makes the air smell better. The better and more loved a building looks, the more pride people will take in maintaining it. Large plants can also help buffer noise.

The first step is the establish a large pot plant in your main entrance, in a handsome pot (we bought a Kentia palm from the Columbia Road Market). We put it in a beautiful large glazed pot, with gravel, compost and then gravel (to retain moisture, but also to make the pot too heavy for lazy people to take away). This was a private project(Camden Council, when we applied, said that they couldn't give us any money for six months, and it would have to be a fake tree in a plastic pot.  We had a meeting, took up a collection and chose to have a real Kentia palm, immediately, in a pot that was in keeping with the historical nature of our Queen Anne style building.

Step Two: Establish pots on window sills  and any communal landings (scented geraniums, geraniums, spider plants are all attractive and lo-maintanence).

Step three: Put  large plants outside your Main Entrance as well (these will generally be shadloving plants, because they are usually in shade). Use the largest pots possible, whenever possible. To pot up,  seak the plant roots overnight. Put a thick layer of gravel at the bottome of the pot (after making sure it has drainage holes). Add compost (peat-free, please) and the plant, more compost (press down hard) and then top the pot up with gravel, to keep down weeks, and retain moisture. Set up all your plants to be low or no-maintenance, and choose hardy plants, which will survive excessive gardeneing as well as neglect.

Remember to plant under the main plant with ivy, geraniums, spider plants, fuschias etc, and scatter lobelia seeds. Also do seasonal planting of bulbs such as tete a tete narcissi, for spring, crocus, tulips. If you have a wall, or railings, some Jasmine will also grow well in shade (but plant your Armandii Clematis in a sunny spot - it's evergreen, so it's a lovely plant when it's happy, but it won't thrive in shade).

How to get a large Kentia Palm into a small mini:  Take cling-film plastic wrap along and wrap it around your large plant tightly, so the plant looks like a mummy. It will be simple, once the plant is wrapped, to transport it without causing any mess. If the plant leaves are too long for the car, to bend them gently without breaking them (and without getting greenery all over your friend's car. This technique also worked for transporting the Communal Christmas Tree (bought at the excellent Leigh Street Hardware Shop - thanks, Raymond for driving us home). We also brought home a six-foot tall morello cherry tree, and grape vines on the Number 91 bus from Crouch End (bought at Alexandria Palace Garden Centre, and planted them in our communal garden in memory of  a former resident, Irene Linanne, who tragically died in a fire at her flat in Newton Street, lighting candles for the Pope's funeral, in 2005).

Revealed: Scandal of tower block fire traps
http://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/052605/n052605_08.htm
NOT a single tower block in Camden is fullyfitted with fire alarms and smoke detectors, a Camden New Journal investigation has revealed.  As the tragic death of 70-year-old grandmother Irene Linnane in a blaze at her 12th-floor Holborn flat showed last month, thousands of tenants across Camden are at risk from the failure to bring fire safety up to modern standards ....

If you're buying in bulk, have the garden centre deliver (if you've found a large bargain, and it's too big for the bus, try calling an large taxi to transport it home. If you have a friend with a van - they have a friend for life!)


SUITABLE LARGE POTS FOR YOUR GARDEN

Buy the best pots you can afford   (wait for the spring and autumn sales - we have some beautiful large blue-glazed large pots which should have costs £50 each, which we picked up for £10. Where-ever you can save money without sacrificing quality, do it - it leaves you more money to spend on other things, such as wormeries, which are a fixed price.)

SUITABLE MATERIALS FOR POTS

Granite, Stone, Concrete, Glazed Ceramic  (check to be certain it's  guaranteed to be frost-proof)

Wood is lovely, but it only lasts 20 years and it can be chemically treated, which means it isn't safe for organic herbs etc..

Metal doesn't allow plants to thrive (and will rust).

Fibreglass will not last.

Unglazed terra cotta can crack in cold winters (and  it will break if it's kicked or dropped).


Plastic is ugly  - although the self-watering green plastic containers are very  good for no-mainteance gardening. If you buy plastic, see if it can ge edged with wood, to cover the plastic up. (The advantage of plastic is that it is cheap, so if you find a great bargain on a usually expensive plant (such as a fruit tree, shrub, armandii clematis, etc.) buy the plant, and then consider planting it temporarily in a plastic or rubber  garden  tug - You can repot it in six months, and it's worth it to wait for the sales to afford a suitable pot).

June 2002
Our inner Courtyard had been derelict since the Camden Council took it over in 1947. We started our garden with no budget for money at all, so we decided to ask for donations. We bought some cheap red geraniums from Columbia Road Flower Market (£5 for 12 plants) and lobelia  from B&Q (50p a tray, June sale) to form the borders of the garden, and put up a notice on our communal notice board, inviting everyone in the building to donate plants. We also declared it a 'Jubilee Garden, to celebrate the Queen's Golden Jubilee, and asked our District Housing Manager Marek Wiluszynski to declare the area a Designated Green Area, which stops the Camden Council Caretakers from using harsh chemicals such as Roundup in the Garden area.

Lobelia is excellent for sunny and partially shaded areas. We bought ours at the end of the selling season, in June 2002, for 50p a tray. Three trays were more than enough to provide edging. We made plant troughs  for the lobelia from tongue-in-groove pine wall panels  from B & Q (about £4 for a bundle of 6) which we cut up and nailed together.  We also bought a 12 plant tray of blooming red geraniums, which bloomed all summer, and placed them around the edges of the garden, creating an immediate impact.

The advantage of lobelia and geraniums is that they are low-maintenance plants that bloom throughout the summer. We learned that lobelia will grow anywhere but complete shade. Try to repot your geraniums into larger pots as the season goes on (the larger the pot, the larger the geranium grows).We found Stewart's green plastic self-watering pots (from Camden Garden Centre) worked best. Although we were worried about whether our geraniums were hardy, we found that the geraniums we took in for the winter, stored on the stairwell window sills of our building, didn't grow on as well as the geraniums we left out in the Garden. If you have any doubts, take plants in (our garden is in a very sheltered spot).

If you are buying plants with a grant, you will need to keep a receipt. If you are donating plants, rather than buying them with a grant, Columbia Road Flower Market is cheap and cheerful  (Sunday mornings, Columbia Road, London).

You want low-maintenance, self-sufficient hardy perennials, or self-seeding plants for the bulk of the garden.

Jasmine planted in March keeps its foliage all winter long. It also grew 5 feet in one season, so it makes a useful wall covering. Japonica also provided an interesting wall plant (and you can make quince jam from the fruits). We will be considering honeysuckle and rambling roses as well.

Rosemary proved difficult to grow in pots, but the lavender seems to have flourished (we planted the potted plants in the ground in April 2003). Herbs like dill, sorrel, parsley and chives (bought from Betty's Herb's From Heaven organic herb stall in Borough Market) all flourished. Although potted bay trees are susceptible to frost, the black bamboo has come back from the same severe frost and looks like it will recover.

If you have children in the building, encourage them to grow plants such as runner beans and sweet pea (perhaps you could have a growing contest throughout the summer).

Buy narcissi and daffodil bulbs in the autumn and plant them in your various pots to bloom in February. Also, invite people to donate their spring bulbs they buy in small pots, after they have bloomed, so you can re-plant them in the garden next year. The more people donate to the garden (whether it is time or plants) the more they will feel responsible for it.


We found that spider plants work very well on our stairwell windowsills (and have the advantage of being very easily grown. Ivy grew very well as well, as well as some geraniums (although not the type we had bought for the Garden). Begonias didn't flourish.

Plan ahead; any houseplants which are tender should be brought in from the Garden for the winter.  If they have been donated, try to put them on windowsills where the people who donated them see them.

The Kentia palm grows very well in our Main Entrance lobby (bought at Columbia Road Flower Market in November 2001). Buy a large pot and lots of gravel, and then just anchor the potted plant in that, rather than transplanting it. The gravel will make the pot heavy enough to convince people they don't want to take it away. Buy a saucer to put under the pot, so the pot and the excess water doesn't mark the floor.

If you are buying large plants like Kentia palms, take some cling-film to wrap around the foliage (it makes the plant easier to handle, when you put it in the car or taxi).

If people have aquariums, old fish water is very good for plants. Otherwise, tomato fertilizer works very well.

APRIL 2003

In October 2002, we applied successfully for a Community Chest fund grant, and received £5,000 to restore our garden area. We plan to do the work communally,  rather than turning the project over to someone else, so that all our funds go towards materials and plants, rather than labour.

We replanted all the original geraniums  from last year (and any spring bulbs such as narcissi and crocus which were planted with them) into green Stewart Self-Watering plastic pots, available from the Camden Garden Centre.

We planted a hedge of alternating lavender and rosemary along the two sets of washing lines, with various herbs growing in between the plants, digging into the old asphalt which was breaking up, with a cold chisel and hammer, to create a trough for soil. We plan to put grass under the washing lines, to help soften the hard surfaces, which will help with noise (hard surfaces amplify noise). We also plan a planter made of railway sleepers, running the length of our long brick wall, so that we can provide enough soil for plants, to grow up the wall. We have bought various fruit trees and plants (including a medlar apple tree) which we have placed in large pots.

    As well as the garden plants, we have addressed maintenance issue which Camden Council seemed determined to ignore. We placed banisters on the outdoor steps to the upper level of the garden, to make them safer for people to use. Also, after over three years of various storage sheds being off their hinges and abandoned, with no response from Camden Council, our Gardening Committee decided to put aside an afternoon (11.04.2003) to put all the shed doors back on their hinges and secure them. We painted the ugly cement pre-formed washing posts  in the garden (circa 1970) green, to blend them in with other things in the garden. The paint took only one coat, and we highly recommend it.
B & Q Paint
Colour: Eucalyptus
product number 0311 6418
Colours Outside
(Multi-surface Paint for exterior wood, masonry & metal).


the problem of covering hard surfaces

Hard surfaces (bricks and stone walls, the walls of your building, tiles, asphalt, cement) cause a natural amplification of noise, so your garden becomes a sounding box. This is lovely if you are a concert hall, but not so lovely if you are a communal garden, neither for the people who are talking, nor the people who are forced to listen. Get permission to paint your own garden walls from your district Housing Manager (Marek Wiluszynski, in our case). Hire a pressure cleaner to clean the wall before you paint. Clean the wall; paint the wall (try to use paint rollers with long handles, so you are never above the 2 metre height recommended by Health & Safety as a safe distance to work). After you have painted the walls, nail or screw in criss-cross wooden trellis and plant things that will grow quickly and cover your wall (jasmine, virginia creeper, rambling roses,  ivy, etc.) Try to avoid poisonous plants, such as lily-of-the-valley, for the safety of children (check to be certain neither the flower, bulb, berry or leaves are poisonous). If you have a shady area of garden, rather than covering it with asphalt or wood chipping or turf, try transferring moss from places it is growing in your garden where it is inappropriate, to places where it is. This will also muffle sound, it looks lovely, it's low-maintenance, and, unlike turf, provides a lovely green carpet without having to be regularly  cut


how to farm moss

If your garden is suitable for moss, it will be growing there already. Moss needs shade, a little (sometimes very little) dirt and moisture. One of the places you can 'farm' moss' is probably below your washing lines. This moss should be removed because moss is slippery, and is a health hazard under the washing lines, which should have a non-slip surface kept scrupulously clean and free of dirt.

One of the easiest ways to farm moss from a neglected area where it has been allowed to grow, is to take a child's plastic sandcastle shovel, turn it so the scoop is facing downwards rather than upwards, and just run the edge of the shovel under the moss. You'll find that it peels away very easily, with very little effort on your part. Just collect it in a pail, and then spread it where-ever you want it to grow and water lightly. Shady places are best, although it will also grow around plants in pots, helping to retain moisture.

how to sweep hard surfaces effectively

It is important that you keep some areas of your garden scrupulously clean, to prevent people from slipping. Pathways, and steps, any area beside storage sheds, and the washing lines. If you have moss growing in these places, you might want to transplant it somewhere else; if you have green mould or black slime, just scrub it to remove it.

After you have lifted as much moss as you need from one of these areas (and weeded, adding the weeds to the compostor), sweep the area with a stiff brush, using small short strokes, to lift as much dirt as possible. Collect this in a pail as well, and spread where you spread the moss, as it will contain small bits of moss you missed the first time around. Wash the area down and sweep again (always saving the dirt you accumulate for other parts of the garden.

We have found hand washing ceramic tiles on our pathways and steps very effective (you will need to do it about three times a year to keep the surface clean and clear). After this, sweeping regularly with a stiff brush at least once a week should keep the mould and unwanted moss away. Sweeping just after a rain is very effective, since the stiff brush easily lifts away the wet mould (or wet the area before you sweep).

If you see an area that need sweeping or cleaning in a communal garden, please do it, or if it is the Caretaker's designated duty, report it to Health & Safety if the caretaker won't clean it. The broken hip or leg you save may be your own, or your neighbours.

why you shouldn't use chemicals or bleach in the garden


Everything you use in the garden eventually makes its way into the water table below and into the environment. If you poison your weeds, you are also poisoning the earth. Think of your children; is their future  or their health worth the immediate gratification of getting rid of that dandelion in the garden? It might be better to  love it to death: use it to make dandelion wine, add the fresh dandelion leaves to a spring salad, use the yellow flowers as a free substitute for colouring food. If you have a genuinely organic, chemical-free garden, even weeds can be used as food (and common garden flowers like nasturtiums are delicious with boiled eggs in sandwiches).

You must co-sign grant applications to the community chest fund, supplying a copy of your TRA constitution, your TRA bank statement and your last AGM's treasurer's report.

If you are awarded the small DMC bid, the co-chairs of your TRA will meet with someone like Jessica Buckley at Camden Council District Housing Department, to decide how the money will be spent. If the items can be supplied by the Council (such as our outside water tap and bulbs for the garden) they will be, otherwise the Council will issue your TRA a cheque, which must be spent  on the agreed items by the 31st of March. (Pay everything by cheque and keep photo-copies of the cheques, a list of what you've bought and all receipts.) If you don't have the receipt, you can't claim the money.

If you are granted a community chest fund grant, you have a year to spend the money (again, keep photo-copies of cheques and receipts as you will have to account for the money).

Have a Health & Safety inspection of the area, to be aware of any problems you might encounter. Ask your District Housing Manager if he is aware of any other TRA that has been given a similar grant in previous years, and contact them for advice. Contact the planning department to see if you need an inspection..

Have a small steering committee for the Garden, and meet regularly. Do all your ordering at these meetings, so that all the people who have to co-sign the cheques are present.

Make sure you keep copies of all receipts, all invoices and all cheques , as well as sending anything important by recorded delivery and photocopying the recorded delivery slip. You can never have too much documentation. 

Consider natural pigments and eco-friendly paints for painting projects.

¤   Natural Collection (UK):

http://www.naturalcollection.com/
e-mail: info@naturalcollection.com
sales line on 0870 331 33 33
Telephone Customer Services on 0870 331 3335
Fax us on 0870 331 3334
Postal Address:
Natural Collection
Eco House
Monmouth Place
Bath BA1 2DQ

¤ Vegetarian Society
(In Association with the Natural Collection Catalogue)
http://www.vegsoc.org/store/

¤   The Green Shop
Cheltenham Road
Bisley
Stroud
Gloucestershire
GL6 7BX.
tel: 01452 770629
fax: 01452 770104
email: enquiries@greenshop.co.uk
web: http://www.greenshop.co.uk/
Opening Hours
Mon - Sat:
9am - 5.30pm
Sun & Bank Hols:
9.30am - 1.00pm


¤   Camden Garden Centre
2 Barker Drive
St Pancras Way
London NW1  OJW
telephone 0207 387 7080
fax 0207 529 8160
sales@camdengardencentre.co.uk
http://www.camdengardencentre.co.uk/
Opening Hours:
April to September
Monday to Saturday 9.00am to 5.30pm.
Late night opening on Wednesdays and Thursdays until 7.00pm.
Sundays and Bank Holidays 11.00am to 5.00pm.
October to March
Monday to Saturday 9.00am to 5.00pm.
Sundays and Bank Holidays 10.00am to 4.00pm

¤   Regis Road Recycling Centre
Regis Road
London
NW5 3EW
Tel: 020 7485 1553
08.00-15.45 (Mon-Sun inc Bank Holidays)
* recommended: Regis Road Recycling Centre for the purchase of compost.
¤   Chase Organics
The Organic Gardening Catalogue
Riverdene Business Park, Molesey Road
Hersham, Surrey
DT12 4RG
United Kingdom
Tel.: ++44 1932 253666
Fax: ++44 1932 252707
E-Mail: chaseorg@aol.com

¤   HDRA -the Henry Doubleday Research Association
http://www.hdra.org.uk/

HDRA is Europe's largest organic membership organisation.
It is dedicated to researching and promoting organic gardening, farming and food.
HDRA's Research and Development Section is working to improve commercial organic growing in Britain.
Its Information and Education Section provides advice to its over 28,000 members and regularly helps the media, industry and statutory bodies. HDRA staff write books and articles for the national press, and appear regularly on television and radio.

The organisation runs a consultancy service on organic garden design and landscaping; large, scale composting and waste management; and organic product retailing.

HDRA's Heritage Seed Library saves hundreds of old and unusual vegetable varieties for posterity, also distributing them to its members. Anyone can join.




¤   Buckingham Nurseries and Garden Centre
Tingewick Road,
Buckingham, MK18 4AE, England
Tel: 01280 813556 (International +44 1280 813556)
Fax: 01280 815491 (International +44 1280 815491)
Order Line: 0845 345 6269 Charged as Local Rate Call
Web Site: www.buckingham-nurseries.co.uk
Online Catalogue: www.hedging.co.uk
E-Mail: web-enquiries@hedging.co.uk
* recommended:  Buckingham Nurseries for price and selection

¤   Premier Housewares
Natural Origins
rubberwood folding stool
30 x H46 cm approx.
http://www.premierhousewares.co.uk/
sales@premierhousewares.co.uk