Gardening by moonlight

Wansteadium’s a bit late to this one but it’s worth mentioning mysterious moonlight gardening sessions which have been going on in Wanstead.

Marian Temple, leader of Wanstead’s militant volunteer gardeners, writes:

This has to be a marriage made in Heaven! Wanstead Community Gardeners and GoodGym. GoodGym is a wonderful idea, combining as it does exercise and community service. James Poole of the Wanstead GoodGym got in touch to ask if they could be of help with our community patches. They meet every Monday at 7pm in Wanstead House, starting the evening with 45 minutes of useful physical action, maybe helping a community group with their allotment, or doing some decorating in a community space, something along those lines. Their evening ends with a 4 km run. They keep healthy and make the area a better place in which to live.

Of course Wanstead Community Gardeners always have something that needs doing. We arranged to meet last week to do some work on the roundabout sandwiched between the George car park exit and Wanstead Station. Just one problem, this time of year, it’s dark! “No problem”, said James. “We’ll wear our head torches.”

This really had the feel of guerrilla gardening, planting in the dark. However, we weren’t real guerrillas as a nice man from the council handed the traffic island and the accompanying long bed opposite the George over to us in April. So, we met by night on the Island Bed equipped with sacks of compost, full watering cans, spades and garden forks as well as a good selection of hardy plants which will be happy in full sun and can cope with drought. All the plants were sourced from our other plots.

It was amazing! Six non-gardeners digging and delving and making a jolly good job of it. After the session, there were a lot of very happy plants tucked in and ready for action next year. No doubt GoodGym and Wanstead Community Gardeners will be involved in more combined efforts. They’ve already agreed to a litter pick around our station patches next month.

What a wonderful resource they are! Anyone interested in GoodGym, either joining the group or having a local community project they could help with, please contact James Poole at James@goodgym.org m.07813 337 553.

You can always keep up to date with the Wanstead Community Gardeners through their homepage here. They can always use broken garden forks or spades if anyone has any.