Community Garden Diary : September 2026

At last, with cooler days and a few drops of rain, we were able to turn our attention

back to our plans for the garden instead of merely keeping our plants alive with

barrel loads of wate.

Keith has dedicated hours to regular watering of all of the plants and especially for

the new fruit trees in the park during the drought, helped from time to time by David

and the support of weekend staff at the community centre.

Our next major project was to replace the decayed edges of the front border with

wooden sleepers that were strong enough to cope with the heavy footfall. With a lot

of hard work, including a serious soaking during a brief downpour in one of the

regular Tuesday morning volunteer sessions, we managed to complete the project

and plant the boarder with marigolds (Calendula) and daffodil bulbs (Yellow Trumpet)

which should reward us with a vibrate supply of colour in the spring.

Since we ordered a bulk delivery of daffodil bulbs, we decided to continue to plant in

the wildflower boarders and we still have a lot of bulbs left, some of which we will

donate to other community gardens and some of which we will plant in other places

nearby in October.

Next, we turned our attention to the hop harvest. Hops are one of the four key

elements to 4H Garden – do you know what the other three are? Like most amateur

gardeners, our knowledge of hops is limited to knowing it as a component of beer so

we have all been on a learning curve. The hop plants are healthy but the crop was

small due to the drought. We experimented with hop tea, hop bitters and David even

made two hop pillows which are recommended for relaxation. Next year we may

even try to make green beer!

After the hop harvest came an addition to the fruit boarder at the top of the garden.

As well as two mixed gooseberry bushes, we planted the thornless blackberry

bushes (Ouachita) and we have set our sights on planting three bare-rooted fruit

trees in November.

The three vegetables beds continue to produce bountiful produce. The tomato plants

have cropped consistently throughout the summer. The Mon maker variety was particularly prolific. Plans for replacement plants at the end of October are already in

progress.

Maintaining and improving the community garden wouldn’t have been possible without the support of our friends at Octopus Community Network. Helena kept us motivated during the summer despite being pulled in multiple different directions. Pete stepped in at the beginning of September so we have benefitted from his breadth of horticultural knowledge as well as his practical skills.

As if the month couldn’t get any better, we were delighted to be given the top award as Community Garden of the Year 2026 at the Islington In Bloom event at the Charterhouse on Monday 28th September. Keither and David were there to puck up the award o behalf of everybody who has worked on the garden and the support we have m the Community Centre. There are too many names to mention. It really was a team effort so it’s only right that it should be a community award.

Hopefully we have another diary entry for you at the end of October.