Our Garden – online version

Winter 2021-22

Trips to other gardens

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One of the more exciting additions to the garden in the winter was the greenhouse, we had been doing our best to sow seeds and take cuttings without one from the start but realised we were very limited. We applied for the Tesco bag for life grant before the pandemic even started and we finally got granted the money last year, this enabled us to purchase this wonderful greenhouse and ever since we have been filling it with plant pots and going seed crazy sowing as many seeds as we can. It even stood up to storm Eunice in February, the wind did blow out some of the side panels which were still on the floor and could be put back into place, we did however lose one small panel from the roof that has now been replaced and back to functioning order.

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On a monthly basis, we have planning sessions in the garden to hear the volunteers’ views and ideas on what they would like to see growing giving them more decision making power within the group. So far in the Grow Club garden, we have focused on growing herbs and flowers to create teas and herbal medicines, but this year the group decided on some trees to add to the space. As some of the volunteers also attend the picking trips with Company Drinks, we agreed to add some dog rose and elderflower bushes to have our own supply of rose hips, elderberries and elderflowers in the garden and fascinate over the growing cycles of each plant. We also learned about columnar or cordon fruit trees, these trees are able to fruit close to the main stem allowing you to grow them in a smaller area and even in pots, we look forward to sharing the growing journey of the 3 fruits, apple, pear and cherry.

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After a year of unease due to the pandemic, we felt it fit to celebrate all the hard work the volunteers and groups contributed to the garden and the rest of the space. We held a winter warmer event in the garden in mid-December to bring back the light in the darkest days. We have wreath-making workshops, lantern-making workshops, fires with good conversation and warming mulled juice as well as delicious food and a goods stall for all to get their last minuet Christmas presents.

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As much as we all enjoy spending time in our own Grow Club garden, we also realise the benefit of visiting other gardens as a group. There are many types of other gardens on offer in London and Essex and people doing some really great stuff around plants, food and growing, there are other community gardens, open public gardens, exhibit gardens and working gardens. They all give a different understanding of how and what to grow, giving us extra inspiration to expand what we do in the Grow Club garden.

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From winter going into spring, we visited a number of other sites to learn, connect and gain extra inspiration to bring to our own garden, whats a community garden without friendly connections to other gardens? In the autumn of 2021, we visited Rainham Hall Gardens and museum, run by the national trust and open to the public for 7 years, this 18th-century museum has a 3-acre site with a huge array of plants and wildlife habitats growing. We then visited an art exhibit in Southend looking at the amazing atom bomb rose saved from extinction and telling the story of the British use of nuclear weapons, we also met with local artists who use plants for dyes and have been inspired to grow our own dye plants. In the spring we visited the Chelsea Physic Garden to see A Flash of Lavender exhibit set up by Queer Botany, here we learned how plants and queerness relate and how plants behave differently in their reproduction methods. And lastly we visited the amazing Sunnyside community garden, a garden that has been running for over 40 years with an amazing group of volunteers keeping the garden running.

Autumn 2021

Grow Club October – December

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As the season’s change, so do our tasks in the garden, as well as our own energy and how we feel about gardening. As summer comes to an end, and the summer harvests have finished, we draw our attention to the autumn harvests and what we can collect to store over winter. There were still many opportunities to collect the herbs we grew filling buckets up with flowers and leaves to use in our teas and herbal products, all the while having sticky hands from each flower plucked.

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Maintenance is the longest-running job in the garden, keeping it neat and tidy and to help the growth of plants, we cut back the grass, shrubs and herbs. Now that we have access to a lawnmower and strimmer we were able to keep the grass cut low and stop it from taking over the beds we want to be able to see. We allowed our wildflower meadow to flower then go into seed, the seeds then drop around and help the meadow continue into the future. Once this has happened we need to cut the old foliage and make sure we remove it from the area, this is because we don’t want the nutrients from the plant matter to feed grass species giving the wildflowers a better shot.

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To celebrate all work everyone put into the groups that are part of company drinks, we held a summer celebration open day. The grow club had a stall with plants we had grown as well as seeds we collected and teas we had harvested and dried, we had a herbal drinks workshop, a national trust consulting drop in and the famous yearly hop pick. We couldn’t get to Kent this year for the hop-picking so we brought Kent to Barking, bringing the hop binds to the pavilion and having an amazing group of volunteers picking the afternoon away. We also had molecular fizz workshops, art sessions, bike repairs and pedal your own smoothie, a brilliant way to enjoy the sun and celebrate all who have been part of our sessions this year.

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A great task of autumn we have in our garden is sifting through our compost we have been collecting for all year. We have a 3 bay compost system, by filling one compartment with plant cuttings, vegetable waste and woodchips the composting process is started, it starts to break down and we help it by turning it into the next bay, aerating it and mixing it. We then start to fill the first bay again until full, in that time the second bay is breaking down even more into rich soil, the last step is to sieve out all the larger pieces of wood, as seen in the above images, what’s left is a very rich compost to help the garden flourish in the next year.

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Another absolute joy of autumn is the leaves, there is nothing more fun than to crunch them under your feet or kick a pile of them, no matter your age, it just calls to us. When the leaves start to drop, they are a marvel to look at with many colours ranging from reds, yellows, oranges and gold, natures own art, and they can be used to create your own art. We however use them to create a growing medium, this time of year we rake all the leaf piles from the garden and place them in or wooden leafmould bin, in time this will break down as the compost has, and give us a lovely fine seed compost, great for sowing seeds and young shoots.

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Whilst we love being in our garden, we also visit others, meet other gardeners and find inspiration in many different ways. In October we were lucky enough to get the opportunity to go and visit the National Trust run Rainham Hall in Rainham, they have a huge 3 acre garden with many different areas and a wide variety of edible and ornamental plants.  In December we was invited to visit Focal Point gallery to see an exhibition around alternative growing practices, and how plants meets art, we then headed over to The Old Waterworks to see the garden they have created to grow specific types of rose and plants you can use as dyes.

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Summer 2021

Grow Club July – September

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The grow Club garden has had so much life in it over this summer, we have spent time connecting with ourselves, others and our environment, this included using our senses to experience the plants in the garden. We drank many cups of herbal tea and dirtied our hands in the soil, new areas to the garden have been created and many herbs were harvested for teas and other products.

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As a group we all worked on growing our herbs from seeds, we sowed the calendula seeds into seed trays with care and intention. We then care and nurture the seedlings, repotting them when they got too big for their trays and planted them out into the raised beds when they were ready to go into flower. There is something so comforting with growing from seed and watching the plant flourish in the garden, we also shared these herbs with anyone that wanted to learn about the herbal benefits of calendula. Many people took the potted plants home and saw the bright orange flower come to life in front of them, they were then able to access a tutorial on how to create a healing balm to help support skin health.

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One of the best parts of summer are the flavours that grow in our gardens and local green spaces, and there’s nothing like the sweet taste of summer berries on a hot day in the sun. Our fruit plants have progressed over the past 3 years to give more fruit each season, we had wild strawberries, jostaberries, black and red currants as well as raspberries and rhubarb. Most of these berries helped us through our growing sessions, nibbling on them as we passed a bush, and the the the squirrels and birds didn’t get to we turned into grow club cordials, the most interesting would have been the rhubarb and “custard” cordial.

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In the spring section of the blog, we mentioned we had been supported by our pop pals square root sodas in a fundraising campaign to provide us with strawberry plants to share with our communities. We had purchased the Alice variety and received them in root form which we planted out in the spring, they exploded into life and sent runners out all over the raised bed. They also gave out the sweetest and most delicious berries and we will have an abundance next year, there were so many runners we have been potting them on and sharing these within our volunteer and growing networks.

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Harvesting is one of our favourite activities at grow club, we make great memories of picking the leaves and flowers of our herbs. We use the time harvesting to have conversations with each other on many different subjects, we also connect with our senses focusing on how the plant feels to touch whiles picking as well as being treated to amazing aromatic smells coming from the herbs. Once harvested we dry the herbs in our dehydrator to save to properties, they can then be used at a later date for herbal teas and other remedy recipes such as herbal skin products and immune-boosting products. Some just get picked on the day and we make fresh herbal teas which are super tasty, this year we even tried herbal flavoured ice lollies which were a huge hit on the hot summer days

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Spring 2021

Grow Club April – June

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Its not just been in the garden things have been growing this year, as our very own Alice has been growing something of her own, she left us in February for a maternity break to grow her own little family. We then welcomed the amazing Martin to our growing team to help facilitate and expand our growing community.

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We watched as Spring arrived in the garden, with an abundance of daffodils, tulips and crocuses, we held small garden sessions throughout the springtime to give a place for our volunteers could come and distress from the world of lockdowns. We were also able to better practice our Covid health and safety and talk as a group about risks when working in a garden.

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We still managed to work on some gardening tasks in the time spent in the garden, we planted some strawberry plants, which was funded by Square Root sodas, we found a variety called Alice and thought it fitting that we still have an Alice in the garden this summer. There was also lots of seed sowing happing to help support the community herbal project with medicinal herbs grown by us from seed.

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April is usually known for its rainy days, hence the saying “April showers” but they held off until May this year, however, this didn’t hold the garden back and after a week straight of rain, the sun shone and the plants in the garden exploded in size and colour. Our rainbow chard grew to a monsterous size, as did our valerian and hops, and the foxgloves and snapdragons burst into colour. As the rain had watered most of the garden for us, we had time to pot on our herb seedlings and learned how to care for baby herbs and how to handle them carefully.

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Late Winter 2021

Grow Club Jan – March

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We started this year in another lockdown and had to change the way we did things in the garden again, this meant our volunteer sessions had to stop for the time being. Instead, we opened the garden to a small number of our volunteers for weekly wellbeing sessions, we also did what we could to keep the garden living through winter into spring.

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We had some cold and frosty days in the garden in January, with a few days of snow cover, but we had tucked some of our plants up with fleece to keep warm. We even had a small fire to keep warm on these days and told stories around the fire.

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In February we received 2 lovely cherry trees kindly donated by the Sakura Project, we gave them a home on the green outside the indoor bowls club, and replaced a cherry that used to live there for many years. We have also been sowing some seeds, we have used some of the seeds we collected last year including; Lavender, Chickory and Calendula, as well as planting our intentions for the next year.

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Last but not least we watched the spring bloom into colour, the bulbs we had planted in previous years really shone through with amazing yellows, whites, purples, pinks and lilacs. We saw snowdrops, daffodils, crocuses and hyacinths, the daffodil heart in our flower meadow gave us hope in the days heading into spring.

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26 January 2021

Grow Club 2016 – now
A look back with Alice and Shaun on 4 years in the Company Drinks Garden.

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1. First Grow Club ideas and wishes session
2. The first beds are relocated to the pavilion from Park Centre
3. New trough planters, ready to have drainage holes before planting up
4. The heart of the garden! The compost bin is built

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From being a nomadic enterprise working across the borough, Company Drinks moved into a permanent home at the Pavilion in September 2017. We began growing the garden area in partnership with LBBD Vocational Support Services in summer 2018. Since then we have run weekly gardening sessions with the members of the Grow Club, and family groups all thanks to funding from LBBD Council and Mayor of London, Groundwork and the London Community Response Fund.

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1. Raised herb bed construction under way
2. Some Grow Club members celebrating the new compost
3. First signs of planting in the new beds
4. Bright crocosmia going into the trough planters by the Pavilion

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Together we have built raised beds, sown seeds, created animal habitats, observed and repositioned perennials to better spots, sown a wildflower and grasses meadow, filled and cared for trough planters, marked the seasons with nature based celebrations, shared stories and plant knowledge, harvested our own rain water, mulched, mulched and … mulched and SO much more. And all with a lively compost at the heart of it that cycles nutrients from our drinks production and shared lunches back into the garden.

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1. The trough planters in full bloom
2. Rudbeckia lining the chocolate mint bed
3. Chocolate mint bed and rudbeckia at a family summer workshop
4. Preparing the sensory bed

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It has taken many many hours of hard work (and good times) from all the wonderful volunteers, and valued advice from the Park maintenance team, Park Rangers Service and friends of the project to get to where we are now, a thriving diverse and welcoming green space nestled into a corner of Barking Park.

We started this year by taking some time to think about the coming year and the ways we will continue to connect within our community.

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1. Creating the spiral pathway in the sensory bed
2. Summer in the sensory bed with teasel, veronica, oxe eye daisy, field marigold and more
3. Summer in the garden
4. January 2021… full of potential for the coming year

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3 DECEMBER 2020
UPDATE

The last few months in the garden have seen us through the second lockdown, the transition into Autumn, and now the reach towards Winter. Even though we have had to restrict our sessions, at times to one-on-one, together we have a lot to be proud of. Our meadow, which is about to see it’s second winter, continued to grow well this year, and Shaun and Steve finally cut it back and gathered all the shrub to add to our dead hedge.

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We have been enjoying the splashes of colour that we see around the garden, from the ornamental Salvias, vibrant pink Cosmos and medicinal Calendula, as well as Snapdragon and Scabious which were kindly donated by Blooms on the Green earlier in the summer.

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We have repositioned a lot of our shrubs to make space for some new exciting projects in 2021. With less to do than in the height of summer, we also have space to reflect as a group on this year, and think about any wishes for the next one.

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24 NOVEMBER 2020

An update from the Grow Club Gardeners

On March 13th we closed our doors and suspended our public program, with anticipation and uncertainty. We are a small organisation, and thanks to some flexibility, funding and re-organising we were able to deliver our growing, picking and making programme differently over the Spring and Summer months, including gradually opening our garden.

We made the decision to continue running gardening sessions – in line with government guidelines – because we know that access to green space has huge benefits on physical and mental wellbeing, and know that there are those who face barriers to that access.

As the second lockdown continues, along with all of the unknowns that we face over the winter months, which come with their own challenges, it is a good time to get outside and make the most of what light there is. We will continue running our sessions with our existing volunteers over the winter months; and will also continue sharing updates, plants and growing tips with the members who are continuing to isolate. If you’d like to find out more about what we’ve all been up to, you can check out our Garden During Covid Blog.

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November 9th 2020

Company Drinks Garden:
A Splash of Colour

Small reminders from the Company Drinks Garden that nature’s got our back

Shaun has been taking pictures of the flowers in the Company Drinks Garden over the last few weeks as we still have plenty in bloom. As the days get shorter and shorter, it’s nice to be reminded that there’s still plenty of colour and beauty in the garden in autumn, thanks to the hard work and care of the volunteers. There’s even still a last, juicy looking strawberry!

Grow Club members will be contacted over the coming weeks to see how we can continue growing together and learning from nature.

We’d love to see your garden photos through this next lockdown. If you’ve still got some blooms to show off, or are planting bulbs for 2021, please so share your progress via contact@companydrinks.info or tag us @goingpicking.

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SEPTEMBER 11th 2020
UPDATE

Although it didn’t feel like it in the garden today, we are transitioning towards Autumn with the equinox just over a week away. And so in Grow Club we spent some time thinking about Autumn and Winter tasks, looking around the garden to see what worked this year and what we might do differently next year. As Winter is a good time to move plants into new positions whilst they are dormant we looked particularly at our fruiting shrubs and came up with some ideas.

We did a final chop of our comfrey plant and dropped the leaves onto our compost pile, we carried on lifting self-seeders and potting them on whilst weeding, watering and mulching the beds. We now have a nice collection of young Valerian, Parsley, Feverfew and Verbena Bonariensis plants which we may be able to make into the start of a community plant nursery next year… watch this space!

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September 8 2020

Grow Club Update

Some Grow Club members are slowly starting to return, and we have been working to clear the weeds that took over a little bit during lockdown, whilst saving the interesting self-seeders and potting them up to grow on in our cold frame. Now is also a good time to take semi-ripe cuttings from your herbs and shrubs, which we have been doing to create more of our lovely lavender and lemon verbena. And of course, we continue to harvest, enjoying the lemon sherbet scent of the second large harvest of the year of our lemon verbena plant.

You can get updates from what’s happening in the garden on our blog here.

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01 SEPTEMBER 2020
UPDATE

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GROWN AT HOME
Remote Grow Club Activities throughout the summer

Tomatoes at home: Individual Grow Club volunteers have been returning to the Company Drinks Garden, and last week they were helping to pot up tomato plants for other group members who are still isolating.

We have started a slow return to Grow Club: it looks different now with timed volunteer slots, masks and physical distancing and no use of public transport; but we were very happy to say it felt like it used to, and we loved having volunteers back in the garden.

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Blooms on the Green kindly donated some of their gorgeous flowers, and also baby tomato plants. A few of these were delivered straight to the doors of our regular volunteers, to be planted directly in their gardens. This week, with the help of the Grow Club volunteers, we were able to pot up 15 tomato plants into nice large pots, where they will have plenty of room to grow and fruit. Shaun and Alice then delivered these to our regular, isolating volunteers to grow on their balconies.

For more information on Blooms on the Green and to find out how you can get your hands on some seasonal, spray-free, fairly traded, fragrant and fabulous flowers, visit the website or contact them via email.

Blooms on the Green is run by Shelagh Martin [formerly run by and now supported by generous start-up support from Growing Communities. Many thanks to Shelagh for inviting us to share the flowers and tomato plants with our groups.

We have also loved seeing your photos of what you have been growing at home. Salome’s mint plant [left], which started life as a cutting taken in a propagation workshop at a Family Gardening session, is looking very productive…We sense a cup of mint tea coming along! And Joyceline’s peas are looking fantastic on her balcony [right].

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3rd AUGUST
PASSING IT ON

Saved seeds of Calendula, Cosmos, Common mallow, Corn Marigold (not field marigold!)

At this time of year there are lots of mature and nicely dry seeds on our plants and herbs so it is the perfect time to harvest and store them well ready for planting next year. For the last few seasons we have been doing this practice more and more; in an effort towards self sufficiency; as well as supporting the growth of plants that are becoming more resilient in our particular environment; as we save their seeds season on season. By doing this we will also be in a position where we can share the seeds we save with other projects.

We have a lot more to learn, but we can thank SeedsShare founder, the late Esiah Levy, and his work around seed saving, and crucially, Seed Sharing. He spoke to us in 2018, and kick-started our awareness and knowledge of how and why we should do this.

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AUGUST
WHAT’S GROWING IN BARKING PARK?

Grow Club member Steve, keeping his distance, and keeping the raised beds happy.

Last week we were able to plant out some of the gorgeous flowers that were donated to us by Blooms on the Green. We prepared the bed by lining it with old rubble sacks and filling it with a mix of top soil and compost. We then planted the lovely snapdragons, scabious, calendula, and more and gave them a good drink. We topped it off with a mulch of partially composted wood chip to hopefully help keep the moisture in. As we are only at the garden once a week, and a lot of what we grow is in containers, watering is a challenge for us. At least we have 2200L capacity of rainwater harvesting, so it is not all from the mains.

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13 July
Family Wild + Well Summer Clubs

Fotos: 1. Plant care in the raised beds / 2. Filling up a watering can from our rain water tank to give our potted plants a drink / 3. Tasting blackcurrants / 4. Harvested Lemon Verbena on the dehydrator

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This last week we also welcomed back some of our Family Wild + Well Gardeners, who we last saw just before lockdown in March. Together we harvested mallow flowers, chamomile flowers, and made our first lemon verbena harvest of the year – all of which will go into our Grow Club herbal tea blends. It was great to be able to share the garden with the groups again, and for them to see the flowers that have grown from the seeds they planted….

….Like this smashing sunflower whose yellow really pops next to the purple of the Veronica – for which we have Core Landscapes community garden and plant nursery to thank. See info below about how to sign up to our Wild+Well Summer Club mailing list.

JULY
GETTING BACK TO GROWING AGAIN
TOGETHER AND AT A DISTANCE

Grow Club member Anthony helps pot Grow at Home Tomato plants with Shaun

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1ST JUNE
CONNECTING TO NATURE

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Throughout lockdown Shaun and Alice have missed the Grow Club – and so has the garden! With only two sets of hands, and at times a lot of heat, the garden is certainly looking overgrown in parts with some areas struggling more than others. It has however been a great lesson in seeing which of our plants and herbs are more tolerant of drought and also which need less care than others, both important factors when working in a shared space and considering the changing climate.

Alpine strawberries are showing their colour on the Barking Park Bowls Green

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The lavender is looking (and smelling) amazing

We wanted to show you how things are growing over here at the Company Drinks Garden. Everything is very much in bloom, if a little overgrown! Needless to say, we miss the Grow Club members and all our volunteers!

We are thrilled to see that the lavender bushes (above) that we moved this winter are alive and well, with lots of spikes of gorgeous purple flowers. They will be coming to a herbal tea near you….

The Valerian is in its second year, and has shot up and out and is absolutely stealing the show! On Friday it was humming with bees and here you can see a bumble bee (of some kind) and a hover fly. This is promising as the larvae of hover fly are a fantastic player in a balanced eco system and keeping some of our pests under control.

The currants are filling out and gaining colour and our strawberries (header pic) have been producing their first harvest. The raspberries are also showing their potential already, and the sweet peas now have flowers and are making their way up the obelisk.

And finally, one of things we enjoy most about a garden which goes with and not against nature, is that we end up with some interesting self seeded plants, like what looks to be Woundwort, Stachys sylvatica. A beautiful plant, with some interesting medicinal properties and lots of nectar for pollinators.

Sadly due to the heat, some of our young cuttings and seedlings have been struggling or died, but we will be working to replace or repair where possible.

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18TH MAY
A MOMENT OF CALM

Thanks to the hard work of the Grow Club Team and some decent rain and sunshine, the garden is looking very alive and colourful right now. We’ve got our first showing of cosmos flowers dotted around the garden, some in the beds and some on the former bowling green. Our meadow is also looking very green with many different varieties of plants coming through.

The chamomile flowers are now ready to harvest and will continue to produce flowers over the coming weeks (see video below). The borage and calendula flowers are also blooming, and have been picked to dry and add to tea blends. We also have monster hops, mallow, and valerian all growing amazingly well, as is the mint in both our peppermint and chocolate mint beds. There’ll be plenty to do once we’re able to spend time in the garden together again.

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May 2020
CHAMOMILE HARVEST

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This week we did our first herb harvest of the year! We picked some chamomile, borage, and calendula as well as a bit of chocolate mint. Last year our chocolate mint bed got a little wild and overgrown, so Grow Club members spent a few sessions carefully removing all the plants, (and trying to remove all the roots!) and then selecting good sections to replant in rows. Some members took them home and have them growing on their windowsills or in their gardens.

We were relieved to see some nice new growth in early Spring this year, and then in the last few weeks the plants have absolutely shot forward. Hopefully if we stay on top of it, we will continue to get lots of lush growth for our teas.

If you are uncertain how to harvest chamomile then why not watch this short video. And if you would like any tips on harvesting other herbs, please let us know and we will try to help.

• For this and other Herb Growing videos, check our Vimeo page

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12 TH MAY
LIQUID FEED 

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We don’t just make tea for us humans! A Comfrey and/or Nettle tea (otherwise known as a liquid feed) is a great way to naturally provide extra nutrients for hungry plants – particularly useful when growing in containers as we do at Barking Grow Club. We’ve made a short video showing how you can do the same at home.

• Check out our short video from Shaun
• See our Wild and Well Blog for all the latest stories and links

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May 2020
GARDEN CHECK IN

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As we tip from Spring towards Summer, the garden is in FULL SWING. We really miss our volunteers, but as you can see from our Garden Tour Video, there will be plenty to do once we are able to meet in the garden again. We will post another video in a few weeks so that you can see how its growin’. We are excited to say we are now growing black peppermint, which has a fantastic flavour when dried for tea, and we are thrilled that both our meadow areas are coming along nicely.

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• Click here to see our Garden Tour Video

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APRIL
GARDEN CHECK IN

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Whilst the public programme is on hold, Shaun and Alice have been been tending to the garden, (following all gov distancing guidelines.) making sure that it’s alive and kicking for when we can finally regroup there together.

We love this time of year, when shoots and buds are breaking through and things are putting on green growth faster than you can say ‘going picking’. This week we noticed the first flowers on our self seeded Borage plant – a fun bit of colour in our “NovelTea” blend plus, the flowers are plentiful once it gets going and the bees love it. Thanks to @MPGALondon and their Bulbs for London scheme we have been enjoying daffodils, crocus’ and hyacinth’s all Spring and now it’s the turn of these alliums which are just about to flower.

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Similarly, the willow hedge which we planted from willows donated by @CoreLandscapesLondon have made it through their first winter and have some lovely growth. There’s nothing like that particular lushness which you see on the first leaves of deciduous plants each year.

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We have really missed having our regular member’s enthusiasm and skills in the garden, but we hope that the photos will bring a little of the outside in. If there is any area in which you would particularly like to see “how’s it growin’”, then just ask and we will endeavour to take some photos next time we are there.

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April
Introducing Window Wednesdays

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We kicked things off this week with the first of the series of Window Wednesdays.

Did you know that when you are finished with your shop bought veg, you can regrow them? Neither did we! But once we found out, we had to try this out. We have started with Celery, Pak Choi, Lettuce and Spring Onion but would love to hear what else works (or, doesn’t work!)
So far, we have enjoyed having something to tend to at home, and knowing that we might get fresh food at the end of it is a bonus.
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If roots and shoots aren’t your thing, then what about drawing the view from your window? Or creating an arrangement on your window sill, using leaves, flowers or twigs picked from your garden or on your daily exercise?

• Check out our short video on Window Grow Your Own
• If you want to share your Window Creations, tag us on social media  @goingpicking #windowwednesday or email us on contact@companydrinks.info
• See our Wild and Well Blog for all the latest stories and links

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APRIL 2020
THE SUNFLOWERS HAVE ARRIVED

Check out our video update from the sunflowers posted at our last Wild+Well Family Gardening Club in February, link below.

At our first Family Wild + Well session this year, the group sowed sunflower seeds. Thank you to you all who took part! These seeds were a donation from one of the Thursday Group volunteers, who had saved them from sunflowers in their own garden.

Now they are strong enough, they have found a home at the Company Drinks garden, and this week you can see a short video of Alice planting them out into a bed prepared by the Barking Grow Club.

We love the invisible trail that connects spaces through sharing seeds and cuttings! Watch this space for photos of the sunflowers as they grow and tips for growing your own at home…

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• Check out our video on the Wild+Well Sunflowers

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• If you want to share your growing at home, tag us on social media  @goingpicking or email us on contact@companydrinks.info

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• See our Garden Blog for all the latest stories and links

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• If you want to share with us your own Home Growing or Growing Tips, or if you are one of the regular Grow Club members, and want to find out how a particular plant or area is getting on, email Alice.
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• See our Garden Blog for more detailed updates, all the latest stories, photos of the plants and useful links..

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7th APRIL
FAMILIES’ EASTER SPECIAL

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We invite you and the members of your family to see how quickly you can find the 16 Easter Eggs and 1 Easter Bunny hidden in this photo of our Grow Club Garden……

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BUG HOTEL CHECK IN

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Last year, with the help of some brilliant volunteers we created Bug-ingham Palace…. our Barking Bug Habitat in the garden at Company Drinks. We constructed it in layers of pallets, and filled each layer with; pine cones, twigs, bamboo, and plant stems bundled together, pieces of broken garden pots, and small rotting logs. We then made a simple green roof, in which we planted drought tolerant crassulas, and wildflowers.

The purpose of the habitat is to encourage insects and invertebrates into the garden, so that we create a balanced ecosystem. It provides them habitat and somewhere to lay their eggs. Some key players who we hope to see an increased number of in the garden this year are solitary bees, ground beetles, lady birds and hoverflies.

• We recommend this great post from Red Ted Art on building your own Bug Hotel, you can even build mini-hotels and hang them from a balcony!
• If you want to share with us your own Bug Habitat progress, tag us on social media  @goingpicking or send photos and ideas to Alice
• See our Garden Blog for all the latest stories, photos and links

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WEEK 2: FRIDAY 3rd APRIL

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COMPOSTING 

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The compost is the heart of the garden. This week we’re sharing a short video as an insight into the final stage of that magical process, where Shaun demonstrates sieving the compost to get the fine, crumbly, lovely organic matter, with which we then plant out new herbs and shrubs and top dress our container beds.

If you look closely you can see it is teeming with worms, and we hope that there are millions of beings too small for the eyes to see, too. We grow organically and don’t use any pesticides or herbicides as we follow the principle of feeding the soil life, not the plants, to end up with the best herbs for our teas.
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• Check out our online video for an Introduction to the Company Compost
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• If you want to share with us your own composting progress, tag us on social media  @goingpicking or send photos and ideas to Alice

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30th MARCH
GARDEN CHECK IN

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The Barking Grow Club volunteer sessions might be on pause, but the garden certainly hasn’t stopped growing! This week we’ve been giving our seedlings, which we began sowing in February, a little more room.

The Cosmos, Nasturtium, Sunflowers (and more) are not part of our herbal tea range but provide forage for pollinators as well as bringing more colour to the garden.

Over the coming weeks we will have more videos showing simple gardening techniques that you can try at home – garden, balcony or windowsill.

• Check our Vimeo for a tutorial: Potting on overgrown seedlings.
• If you would like to share with us your own Potting progress, tag us on social media @goingpicking, or send photos and ideas to alice@companydrinks.info.

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