Guest blog from the Hammersmith Community Gardens Association

Phoenix Farm in White City
We hope you all had a lovely Easter from all of us at Hammersmith Community Gardens Association.

One member of our team is still caring for the plants and animals at Phoenix Farm in White City, while our volunteer gardening sessions are postponed, to keep everyone safe. One of our amazing volunteers, Lydia, made a short film of Phoenix Farm over the Easter weekend. We hope you enjoy this 90 second video of peacefulness and calm as much as we did! Here is the link to the video:

Please enjoy 90 seconds of beauty and calm with us. One member of staff is still caring for the plants and animals at Phoenix while our volunteer sessions are postponed, to keep everyone safe. We hope you all had a lovely Easter from everyone at HCGA 🌻🌿🐰 pic.twitter.com/xWMCAmoy18

— HCGA (@HCGAGardens) April 14, 2020

This month, our head gardener, Cath, has had a lot to do in the garden! She has been busy sowing a huge variety of seeds in the greenhouse, such as: tomatoes, courgettes, pumpkins, French beans, coriander, basil and outside she has been sowing broad beans, sunflowers, peas, carrots, lettuce, rocket and spinach! If you are looking for some fun, food growing and nature craft ideas you can check out our website http://www.hcga.org.uk or sign up to the HCGA newsletter:

https://mailchi.mp/33fc6be56336/playemails​

Over the last week, we have given away over one hundred free ‘growing kits’ at Ravenscourt Park (outside the cafe) and on the White City Estate! Next week, we will be giving away more growing kits in Queen’s Park Gardens.

Keep an eye on our Twitter page for updates: @HCGAGardens. Inside the growing kit you will find sunflower seeds and other vegetable seeds, instructions on how to sow and plant them, small pots, compost and ideas for things you can grow at home from your store cupboard or from your food waste. Happy growing!

We have also launched our annual sunflower growing competition so if you would like to enter, sow some sunflower seeds now! You don’t need a garden, why not grow them in pots on your windowsill?! Follow the instructions below to help
you.

New initiatives during lockdown

With this year’s Open Gardens Squares Weekend currently postponed (we are busy investigating how we might provide an alternative event for existing ticket holders later in the year), we are keen to provide our network with interesting and engaging content via our various channels – including the website and social media.

Every week on our social media channels, we are running ‘virtual garden tours’ and highlighting stories from the inventory as well as sharing content from some of those organisations that support our work throughout the year. The inventory can be found at:

http://londongardensonline.org.uk/

In addition, we are now running a series of guest blogs by some of the gardens who ​open up their sites as part of the London Gardens Trust​’s ​regular activities (which celebrate and champion all historic green space across the capital whether including public parks, allotments or garden squares).

The guest blogs will give updates from gardens about what they are doing during lockdown, videos (where possible) of activity happening that week and even ideas and tips for your garden or growing space. 

Keep an eye out for new ideas and initiatives which we hope to bring together over the upcoming weeks. Hope you enjoy!