Making The Garden Grow - The Inside Story: 23

Garden Hero 10 - Peter Tymkow

Peter has rarely missed a week at the FGCG and has been instrumental in building our pond & accompanying raised bed -  measuring, cutting and bolting away week after week.  The pond is now known as Peter's Pond and we may even give it a name plaque!  Peter is known for his quiet determination and dry humour.  He has a background in nature conservation and has valuable experience working with other groups such as ours including the Stave Hill Ecological Park (www.tcv.org.uk/urbanecology/stave-hill-ecological-park) .  Peter was also part of the team that volunteered to help with the Groundworks delivery way back in January.

Making The Garden Grow - The Inside Story: 22

Well, That Caps It All!

Another slightly soggy building session this week, although nowhere near as wet as last week.  

Sola and his capstone

The final fencing for the kid's zone went in after much digging and pick-axe work by newcomer Sola.  As you can see there was no way a fence spike was getting through that lump of concrete (a jumbo capstone as you can see from the angled shape).  Thankfully Sola persevered and the spike Finally went into what was a rather large hole.  Just another day in the life of the FGCG and a good example of why all the planting will be in raised beds.

As you know the FGCG was originally a double-fronted Victorian villa, which was levelled and the rubble spread across the site. Over time the soil and plants took over but some of them are surviving in very shallow soil.  The Budleija forest is actually rooted on roughly 5cm of soil on top of paving stones.  Sometimes the terrain's helpful - when you discover existing paved paths for instance, but often it can make life tricky.  However, a bit of lateral thinking and/or elbow grease usually gets us where we need to be!  

Making The Garden Grow - The Inside Story: 21

Buggies a Go-Go! (October 2015)

The bike & buggy park in
the kid's zone

Another glorious day on Saturday.  The sun was bright and warm and we finished the month on a building high as well as a weather one.  We made real progress on the kid's area, which should be finished next week and the buggy and bike park's up and running thanks to Sophie and Isobel.  Mike's taken charge of completing  the kid's area, which has freed up some of the team for path planning and the quiet zone - Jo and Kevin are the king and queen of paving!  Peter continues to work his magic on the pond, which will be completed next week ready for paving.  The quiet zone boundary's going great guns thanks to two new volunteers, Keiran and Lucy, who bashed in fence posts with a sledgehammer for an hour after collecting more donated paving slabs in their van.