The Plant swap, held in place of our usual open day on Saturday 16th May, was a great success with an estimated 200-300 plants changing hands. Tomatoes were as popular as ever but there was a good range including peppers and pumpkins, herbs and flowers, seeds and bundles of rhubarb. £200 was raised for charity and the social distancing worked well. Thanks to Phil, Joe and Giuseppe for organising this.
The minutes of the July committee meeting are here:
The open day on May 10th featured a fantastic plant sale, although it was a bit windy. Lots of tomatoes, pumpkins, courgettes, peppers, chillis, brassicas, cottage garden plants and even okra and cacti were sold. Phil’s intricate labelling system and de-coding chart was a great talking point encouraging people to try some unusual varieties, including tomatoes that are meant to be green (“Green Zebra” and “Darby Yellow Green Striped”).
Sadly we were missing Cleve (who is very busy building a garden at Chelsea Flower Show which takes place towards the end of May – good luck Cleve!) so there were no bhajis. However Giuseppe, Julie and team produced some fantastic pizzas in the new oven and we also had lovely roast vegetables from the barbecue.
As usual lots of plot holders baked delicious cakes. It was a very enjoyable occasion and £332 was raised towards the running costs of the site. Thanks to everyone who helped and came to buy.
The latest newsletter has just been published and is available here:
The community orchard has been partly replanted as some of the trees were not thriving. Cleve thinks that this is because they were on dwarfing rootstock which was struggling to cope with the soil conditions. The new trees are on a more vigorous rootstock. Hopefully there will be lots of apples to share in a few years time!
On Wednesday 26th March, the Richmond branch of The Conservation Volunteers came to fill in some of the holes in the track. The Council paid for the materials and our funds paid the very reasonable costs of their labour. Seven volunteers and team leader Simon Hawkins worked very hard using wheelbarrows to move material to fill the holes and a vibrating plate to compact it. They kindly finished the day by tidying the compost heaps in the south car park.
Thanks to a great deal of hard work by Henry and his helpers we now have a lovely new outdoor oven next to the community plot. The oven will be fired up at weekends over the summer for people to make bread and pizza. Please go to visit it if you’d like a demonstration. It will be in use at the next open day on 10th May.
Welcome to the website of Bushy Park Allotments Association. We are the largest allotment site in London Borough of Richmond and can be found in Hampton High Street next to the swimming pool.
