Wreath making and decorating this week. Our upcycled pallet makes a great Christmas Tree!
The volunteers wish everyone a very Happy Christmas!
OPG diary – December 2021
Tag: volunteer
OPG diary – November 2021
Winter is coming, it’s all still very beautiful!
Removing the green hazel, making an enormous hole and then replanting with a bronze one! It will all be worth it.
Removing the ivy on the walls is going to be more of a long term project. Look at that wonderful brick work though.
OPG diary – October 2021
A rainy start to October! Autumnal tones everywhere now. The bees are still out in force though.
Our Halloween Spooky Spiders Trail went down well with Charlton House Explorers this half term. There were 10 spooks to find around the garden, and it kept them all busy after their Ghosts and Gargoyles session in the Long Gallery. We had 140 children through the gardens over the two days, phew. Great fun, although we didn’t do much gardening this week!
OPG diary – September 2021
The Long Border has its Autumn colours on. Orange Tithonia ‘Torch’ and marigold Tagetes ‘Cinnabar’, with Salvia ‘Black & Blue’ stunning in the background.
OPG diary – August 2021
The Bank Holiday weekend was enlivened with a play “Family Tree” performed in the gardens, as part of the Greenwich & Docklands International Festival. Based on the life of Henrietta Lacks, it certainly lit up the garden!
A very tall flowering plant which is just coming out in the garden has been catching the attention of visitors and volunteers alike. It is Vernonia arkansana ‘Mammuth’ and was featured this week on Gardeners World when Nick Bailey visited Knoll Gardens. Very appropriate as we bought our own Vernonia from Knoll Gardens back in May!
Together 21: Volunteers were in the garden for the borough’s Together 21 Festival. Very sad for visitors that it was such a drizzly day, but at least the garden liked all the water. Spirits not dampened but umbrellas were up!
This is our bargain plant of the month – a Lysimachia clethroides specimen bought for £10 at Members’ recent trip to RHS Hyde Hall, and now split into 23 new plantlets. Filled up the whole corner of one bed, we are just so thrifty!
OPG diary – July 2021
The garden is getting into it’s summer swing now, so much is in flower. It is amazing how complete it looks for a “first year”. Penstemon Garnet is just going on and on and on!
This is the view in July from the CABAHS 70th Anniversary bench:
A recent initiative – Star Plant of the Week. No contest: it was the teasels this week, they are gigantic, and covered in bees.
Betony and Phlox demonstrating The Clash!
And now it’s the turn of the Echinacea purpurea “Magnus”, with white Erigeron annuus frothing at the back and a yellow Patrinia photo-bombing in the front.
OPG diary – June 2021
3 June
National Volunteers Week. Thank you for the muffins Charlton House!
Rheum and foxgloves in the Long Border (foxgloves courtesy of Greenwich Park – thank you!):
30 June
The pomegranate is flowering in the Peace Garden (top left) the stag beetles are hatching and marching, there is a lovely Malope trifida ‘Vulcan’ annual in the Long Borders (bottom left) and the gravel garden has a new addition of Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ to add some more zing!
Our Papaver orientale ‘Burning Heart’ have exploded into flower this week. They are fabulous plants, look at the size of them! They came as bare roots, all the way from West Lothian. Thank you Binny Plants.
OPG diary – May 2021
Early May
The rainiest May for years, wet volunteers still working away. (They come for the Lotus biscuits at half time…). The gravel garden looks rather good in the rain actually. But for heaven’s sake when is that Alianthus (Tree of Heaven) going to come into leaf? It’s almost as slow as the Mulberry.
Bird bath being used, and our lovely Cotinus (Smoke Bush) is coming out.
Sunday 30 May
Our Plant Sale and Community Day was a great success – all those pleas were answered and the sun did come out. Thank you so much to everyone who donated plants or gave their time on the day to help. This was the biggest plant sale CABAHS has ever held, and has raised over £950 for the Hospice, plus more funds to continue the garden revival.
OPG diary – April 2021
The gardens opened to the public on18 April for our ‘Bunnies in the Beds’ Easter trail, and a plant sale in the Long Borders. We were very impressed to receive a visit from keen gardener, the Mayor of Greenwich, Linda Bird. The gardens are now open Monday to Friday, 10am-4pm.
More pics below: top right is Viv in front of her re-located driveway, now the gravel garden. And the bottom left picture is of Bunny number 4, Borage, or Panic Bunny as he is better known since we discovered rather late that there was no Borage in the Peace Garden, so we had to hastily plant some!
Flowers out! And thirsty bees out too.
OPG diary – March 2021
9 March
So nice to see volunteers back in the garden. A great weeding and planting session.
16 March
The potting-up team
The Long Borders Party
We even had a canine volunteer today, being good as gold (no squirrels around luckily!)
18 March
The Rockery Ladies.. Making a good start on the Rockery weeding, might need a bigger fork next time!
What a turn out for the Long Border. We had peak volunteer numbers, on a rather wet and nasty day. Thank you so much to everyone who came along, hope you come back (and please bring nicer weather!)
The start of a bird bath in the central bed! Thank you to the chain gang..
Charlton and Blackheath Amateur Horticultural Society 