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Secret Garden – thanks to Jane and Damien

The main structure of the Secret Garden has now been completed! This is mainly down to the hard work and determination of our members Jane and Damien. They have given up many of their weekends this year to design and build our new accessible Secret Garden as well as oversee the work of their friends and family (thank you Annette, Sophie and Alice) as well our plotholders who have provided some additional help on volunteer days and our site manager Paul. You can read more about the history of the garden here and here.

Magical Secret Garden

The garden will mature over the coming months and years as the climbers grow to enclose the space and make it more magical. At the moment I particularly enjoy the beautiful shadows that are cast in the garden by the willow tunnel, coppiced hazel fences and climbers outside the door arbour. I’ve even enjoyed sitting and passing the time of day with fellow plotholders.

Volunteers needed

We will need help maintaining the garden over the years to come. As with all work done on site, it is our plotholders and members who make Dorset Road Allotments such a safe, attractive and enjoyable allotment site. Help that will be needed include:

watering the pot plants
weeding flower beds
cutting the grass.

We will also need more plants to fill out the large flower border. If you are splitting perenniels, sowing annuals or have some spare shrubs please consider donating some plants to the garden.

If you can spare some time to help in the garden or want to donate some plants please speak to a committee member.

Tesco Bags of Help

And finally, we wouldn’t have been able to build our wonderful Secret Garden if it wasn’t for the help of our local community who voted for us in the Tesco Bags of Help scheme. Thank you to everybody who voted. I hope you have already visited the garden on our Open Day. We will also be having a launch party on Sunday 27th August. We are also open every Sunday between 10am-1pm for the local community to visit.

Save

Our Secret Garden is taking shape. Thanks to our local community we won a community grant from Tesco Bags of Help scheme. Since then we have planned and built our new Secret Garden. The garden, designed by two of our members, will be a calming space for members and visitors to relax in.

The Garden Design

The theme for the garden was ‘secret’ and ‘woodland’ and the aim was to create the garden using as much recycled material as possible.

Creating the garden

The main structural elements were put in place by contractors in March to ensure the garden is safe and accessible. Since then volunteers have been bringing the garden to life. They have planted a willow tunnel and a fedge, recycled donated plants and built features such as the hazel pole fences, hanging picture frames and windows to peek through.

Thanks

We would like to thank everybody who has helped to create the garden so far, but especially our members Jane and Damien for all the hard work. We would also like to thank the 19th Bromley Scouts who built the two bug hotels

Next steps

We hope to have a formal launch party for the garden in the summer when the plants have grown. Before then there’s still a lot more work to be done ranging from weeding to woodworking.

If you would like to be part of the team creating and maintaining this wonderful new community garden please speak to a committee member.