Our community

Musical Garden Party in Olden Garden on Sunday 12th May

We look forward to welcoming you and your family and friends to our Musical Garden Party 2pm – 6pm

Entrance: £5 (£1 aged 3-16) (under 3s free) Cash or card on the door

Supporting local families through our Vegetable Patch

We planted garlic in three veg patches – all well fox proofed! In the greenhouse, greens continue to do well. And we have planted pots of bulbs for Little Explorers to take home. see Lynne’s Veg Patch Autumn 2023.

Olden Garden members, volunteers and visitors continue to welcome and support families with children, especially those who do not have access to a garden, as is the case for some of the Little Explorers team.

We are currently working on soil improvement in the veg beds and thinking about how to deter foxes, as their digging is a problem. See Lynne’s Veg Patch Summer 2023. ‘Little Explorers’ – the mini garden club for children – continues to grow – in all senses!

Spring 2023 saw us spreading well rotted manure on the veg beds – some people enjoyed this job more than others! Crops that overwintered well include garlic, leeks, parsley, red veined chicory and mustard greens. Spinach, parsley and greens are also doing well in the greenhouse. Baby kale, wasabi, spinach and red lettuce were sown, ready for early summer. See Lynne’s Veg Patch Spring 2023

The Autumn 2022 highlight was our very successful potato harvest, held at half term. Families and children came along to dig up the potatoes. Several varieties of potato came up, blue, yellow, red, purple and white – a rainbow of colours! And everyone had a bag of potatoes to take home. We are enjoying the rain, celebrating how well our seaside bed of sea cabbage, sea kale and sea beet is doing and dreaming of spring.

Although the Summer 2022 heatwave means lots of watering, it also means a decline in the slug and snail population! So, we have French beans, runners and courgettes all doing well. In the raised beds are celery, leeks and tomatoes. In the greenhouse, basil is looking fabulous and we had a good strawberry crop.  We are supporting a new Islington group – ‘Welcoming neurodiversity in our community’.  See Lynne’s Veg Patch summer 2022

Spring 2022 and our greenhouse is full of salad leaves from the veg crew. After a challenging autumn, we now have rainbow chard, mustard greens, parsley, various lettuce and chicories, underplanted with spring onion. Outside, in the raised beds, garlic is coming up well; red veined chicory and stridolo both looking good.

Olden Garden Veg Patch continues to support food growing across Islington whenever possible. During the Easter holiday, Lynne ran a session for 60 reception children from Thornhill Primary School – at the wonderful new Outdoor Classroom at Carfree Open Space. Each child received a large pot from Olden Garden and Lynne gave them hands on experience in filling the pots with compost, identifying different seeds and planting pea shoots, spring onions and nasturtiums. Children labelled their pots with giant lolly sticks and proudly took them home. Starting early with food growing – making edible pots – see instructions .

Continuing our ‘outreach’, Lynne is running an edible planting session with 60 reception class children as part of Forests for Change Outdoor Classroom. Olden Garden is providing pots for all the children. Lynne’s vegetable patch spring 2022

Spreading Olden Garden seeds through the community – Lynne’s herbs and seeds August 2021

Despite the antics of families of foxes, Olden Garden continues to be a hub for community vegetable growing – Lynne’s Vegetable Patch summer 2021

By early 2021 the project had gone from strength to strength – Lynne’s Vegetable Patch spring 2021

During the Covid lockdown restrictions in 2020, Olden Garden provided facilities to enable families to take part in a seed kit project which provides seeds, pots, compost and instructions for any children wanting to have a go at growing – Lynne’s Vegetable Patch 2020

 

 

Supporting our local community

Our Garden House and patio provide the ideal environment for awaydays and training days for staff from our local social services teams.

We know that many families don’t have gardens of their own and we are particularly keen for young people and school pupils to experience gardens and nature.

Our 2023 Chelsea Fringe Music Festival was a great success! Over 500 visitors from our local community came along to enjoy tea and cakes and an afternoon of entertainment from music groups performing throughout the garden and woodland. A huge thank you to everyone involved!

Watch a clip of our musical celebration in Olden Garden during the Chelsea Fringe in 2016. This video was created with much help from volunteers, as a contribution to Highbury Heritage, a resource created by Christ Church Highbury to meet the community engagement criteria of the Heritage Lottery Fund grant to repair its iconic church spire.

Enjoy our musical comedy with a rap celebrating the Chelsea Fringe 2021. Kate Shortt will take you to the greenhouse and the graffiti as she plays her ‘Air on a G-string’ on her cello in the Garden. With thanks to Laura and Andy for filming.

As our second musical contribution to the Chelsea Fringe 2021, Kate Shortt plays ‘The Swan’ from the Carnival of the Animals on her cello in the Garden. With thanks to Laura and Andy for filming.

 

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Water butt repaired!

Thank you to the volunteers who repositioned and raised the water butt beside the greenhouse, building a new platform from sleepers. It is working again!

Open House – a great success

Over 70 visitors came to our London Open House Festival day and appreciated our ‘beautiful and tranquil place’, a ‘recharge in the centre of town’, a ‘hidden gem in the neighbourhood’, a ‘wonderful and magical oasis’, Thank you to all the volunteers who helped to make the day such a success.

Kate Shortt in 2021