Community Gardening, Growing Flowers & the Best Books
The last few weeks have been a slower pace, a good time to reflect and to spend a little time away from the desk. Here are the things I’ve been doing, thinking about doing, and thinking about:
Gardening with the local community - Paradise Cooperative - a community garden tucked away in Wandsworth. I’ve been along for a couple of hours at a time, and we’ve weeded, planted trees and harvested kale and broccoli. It feels super to be in the outdoors, working with others and with the land and the soil, and growing right in the centre of London. The food they grow goes off to all sorts of local places including Home Community Cafe in Earlsfield and Well-Kneaded.
Reading about plants, people and the climate crisis - Gardening in a Changing World by Darryl Moore. I’m only half way through, but the pages of this book are currently covered in yellow highlighter and sticky tabs. Everything Moore says just makes so much sense, we need to learn to work with the plants to preserve the future, and we need to do it now. If you are after a really good book that explains the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and just how important a role plants play in our lives + a concise gardening history - here it is, this is your book.
Planting hardy annual seeds - How to Grow the Flowers, Wolves Lane Flower Company. I love this new book from Marianne and Camila who grow sustainable and seasonal flowers in North London. Their advice is simple to follow and practical, and particularly useful if you want to start growing flowers from seed in the city. I’ve planted some Nigella and Cornflowers and Sweet Peas and things are happily starting to happen. And if you want to hear their inspiring career change story, listen to them on the Roots & All podcast, episode 182 (my absolute favourite listening at the moment - thank you Sarah Wilson!).
Dream undergraduate degree - Black Mountains College, BA in Sustainable Futures: Arts, Ecology and Systems Change, based in the Brecon Beacons National Park. SO exciting, it teaches practical skills and theory, with the aim of changing the thinking around our current systems, so that we can start planning for the future. I kinda want to sign up… And Ben Rawlence, who set it up, has also written a book about the retreating treeline in the Arctic and what it means and could mean for us - I’ve just started reading, I’ll keep you posted!
2 flora magazines found in the Garden Museum shop - Bloom Magazine and a little zine called FLORXL. Bloom is beautiful and feels so fresh and relevant and important and my absolute go to garden/plant magazine. FLORXL is just a little piece of horticulture fun, all sorts of young gardeners and creators giving a little piece of wisdom, and all their profits got to the Lemon Tree Trust.
Quiet time - at the RHS Lindley Library in London, and RHS Hilltop Library at Wisley. I kind of don’t want to share this secret, but you can use these libraries for free (you will need to pay to go into Wisley) if you need a peaceful spot to work. And even better, if you are an RHS member you can borrow from their wonderful selection of every gardening book ever. See you there!
Finding out about what’s on - THE HUB instagram account - love this, a little place that lets you know about upcoming gardening lectures, talks and events. So useful, and so much on!!
And my one indulgent consumable item - this wildflower print organic cotton duvet cover by Mother of Pearl, so so pretty.
