Gardening

Gardening could cover much of what we do, but this Page is about more formal horticulture, flower beds etc. Most of the Greens were set up as greenspaces, with little in the way of formal gardens, yet most have at least some groups of bulbs or small beds at the entrances etc. Generally speaking gardens require quite a bit of maintenance, but at least they do not neccesarily have such heavy, expensive work as maintaining trees and large shrubs. Inserting flowers can make the Greens more colourful, especially when there are not many wild flowers; whilst weeding etc can be hard work, garden work may attract different volunteers; different visitors and different sponsors.

Gardens within the Greens
A number of Greens have separate gardens in them, such as New Southgate, which has a small Children's Garden, where the local children play a big part in designing, choosing and planting it.

Borders, Entrances and other Garden Features
Entrances and any other gardening that can be seen from outside should be designed ensuring that there is sufficient resource to maintain them, as a high priority, since they will be seen by people who are not even on the Green.

Raised Beds
Consider creating a Raised Bed if people are interested in creating some kind of flower beds. If beds are accessible for the elderly and infirm to maintain, then not only is the work more likely to get done, but the community is better served by creating opportunities for those who find ground work difficult. The bed may well be more visible, have less weeds and drain better.

Garden Work
It is important to have volunteers ready and willing to maintain a garden if a Green decides to create one. Many Greens have certain volunteers who are particularly interested in gardening, often including people who do not have a garden of their own.

Weeding
All Greens have weeding of some sort to do, such as edges of paths. Flower beds will always need weeding and the general advice experienced gardeners will usually give is that the more often weeding is done, the smaller and easier to remove the weeds will be.

Sponsorship and Donations
Most garden centres and other shops that sell plants can be pressed for donations of plants. If our teams know anyone that works in one, bargain plants, or even plants destined for the skip can be scrounged and used. The entire hedge of the Children's Garden in New Southgate came from a Homebase skip.