London Road Station Partnership Blog

I’m meeting later with partners from the Sussex Community Rail Partnership, the umbrella group that brings together stakeholders associated with the Brighton to Seaford line. Time to take stock of our activity in the first half of this year … well, up until mid-July.

Our major project has been the Pocket Park – creating a small park area under sycamore trees where previously there was rubble, dumped builders’ material, litter and brambles. It’s lovely to sit out at our bench and table in the cool shade of the trees.

It’s also turned into a bit of a botanical experiment. Since March/April we’ve been planting wildflowers and ‘weeds’ there. It’s a tricky area with very chalky soil and very thirsty big trees. Yes, we’ve been watering regularly throughout very dry weather to try to give our plantings and sowings a chance.

So we’re now observing what has grown well and what suffers from the drought. Totally counter to my expectations, comfrey – feral plants from a local park, The Level, and which are said to like moist soil – has done well while purple toadflax and herb Robert have all but disappeared now. Our statuesque great mullein has dried up while next to it ‘Fox and cubs’ is establishing well. Some of the geranium nodosum have completely died back, along with ‘Sweet Cicely’, while geranium macrorhyzum is looking strong. Sweet woodruff, which has died back in my garden, is looking quite lush in the deep shade.

Our specialist wildflower seed for chalky shade has germinated into a range of very small seedlings but very slowly . We’ll have to wait a bit longer to discover what’s there.

We’ll continue to monitor our wildflowers given seriously challenging climate conditions becoming the new normal in the chalky south east.

Were also monitoring bird visits. Early on, a blackbird couple were clearly a bit put out that we were in their space but they sang beautifully and I believe set up a nest high in the sycamores: cheeping of baby birds has been heard. We also had a jay visit us while we were having tea one Tuesday afternoon. Difficult to catch a photo of it but it arrived in a characteristic flash of light blue and pinky-beige. And there have been plenty of sparrows and some blue tits in among the ivy.

The pocket park came into its own during our two open Sundays in June. We had a regular stream of visitors: mostly neighbours and friends from other community groups. It was particularly good to see how much local people enjoyed the space.

We haven’t yet sorted out arrangements for opening the Pocket Park to the ‘public’ – a bit more discussion is needed with the railway and within our group. And there’s still work to be done: more furniture and more woodchip plus lots more mulching of our planting areas, some display boards to explain our botanical and wildlife monitoring and signage. Just at the moment, the drought/heatwave means we are keeping gardening etc. to a minimum.

It has certainly been an extraordinary growing year: a long wet start, then repeated heat waves from middle of May. And no rain to speak of since the end of June. Our water butts ran dry ages ago, and although we are not yet under emergency water measures, we do need to use water very sparingly.

It’s been hard keeping our platform planters flowering. Lobelia, which normally works well, is almost dead, begonias aren’t really flowering, antirhynums are surviving the drought but not the strong winds (and foxes, squirrels, and other night marauders). And the planters are leaking … repairs and reconstruction required once the weather is cooler.

The tree pits are looking ok – I think the initiative to invite neighbours to water them has worked well. And much of the planting is proving fairly drought-resilient (lavenders, verbena bonariensis, silver-leafed cineraria, and stachys).

The edible growing plot is really ‘on hold’. Sadly our sweet peas have suffered badly, as elsewhere, despite best efforts. Potatoes took over the raised beds before we could plant courgettes. Beetroot, salads and chard has been and gone. The leeks are surviving and the mini-orchard shows promise. I’m hoping we’ll have some ok apples and pears despite the drought. Meanwhile our good old plum has grown again … after our attempts last year to cut it down. It deserves respect.

I think overall we’ve had a lot of commitment this year from the local group and quite a bit of interest from further afield, particularly neighbours in the local area. We’ve become a de facto hub for supporting the opt-out-of-glyphosate weeding efforts in local streets. However, the extremes of weather have sometimes made for a stop-start rhythm, which makes it hard to build up continuity, and have certainly scuppered some of our growing efforts. No point in temperatures above 25C trying to grow seeds or make new plantings – it’s watering, watering, watering just to keep things alive. I think we will probably need a thorough rethink of our planting this coming autumn. And maybe our traditional harvest supper will have to come earlier: in June???

One thing is for sure: we’ll have to have potatoes and apples on the menu for this year’s event probably in October.

I have been feeling rather grumpy about kale. Don’t get me wrong, I love eating kale – mixed in with mashed potato or stir fried in olive oil with a few raisins to offset the bitterness. No, it’s the fact that every year it gets systematically destroyed by cabbage white caterpillars. So what’s the point, I grumble? A salutary response from one of our number at London Road Station community garden: ‘I think this is the true function of the home grower vs commercial growing …. to provide a free all-you-can-eat buffet for caterpillars and other insects thus supporting the vital local biodiversity!

So, no more grumbling at aphids and caterpillars. However, I think I draw the line at slugs and snails.

Great signs on the tree pits outside that station – thanks to Linden and the Arboricultural Society.

The month of June has been busy and challenging. After a sudden heatwave in May, we started June with storms, high winds and rain. We then lurched into a super-heatwave of extraordinary temperatures above 30C.

During this time we opened the gardens as part of the Brighton and Hove Community Gardens Network trail. We’ve had a lovely time on two Sundays, one very hot and one windy. We’ve had long leisurely discussions with neighbours and other visitors, sitting under the sycamores in the new pocket park. What a boon that has been in the hot weather! It’s a delightful space. Thank you to everyone who visited and to the members of the London Road Station Partnership who spent their Sundays helping out with drinks, showing people around, and generally enjoying the space.

We were going to open up for gardening and visits this afternoon Tuesday 23rd June 2026 from 2pm to 5.30pm. However, it looks to be very hot – amber weather warning in place.

We‘re delaying our starting time to 3.30pm when it might just be a little cooler.

Our new pocket park is proving a boon in this hot weather. It’s beautifully cool there. We spent most of last Sunday there chatting with neighbours – that’s what community gardening is all about!

We’re open again next Sunday 28th June 11am-4pm.

The London Road Station Partnership gardens are open as part of Brighton and Hove Community Gardens Network garden trail ‘Routes to Roots’, sponsored by Brighton & Hove buses.

We’d love to see you on:

SUNDAYS 21st and 28th JUNE 11-4pm

TUESDAYS 16th and 23rd JUNE 2-5.30pm – our normal work days.

You’ll find us by the railway bridge in Shaftesbury Place, BN1 4QS.

Come and see how we’re transforming three small areas of waste land at our local station: a shady garden of shrubs, a vegetable garden with a mini-orchard of local apple and pear trees, and – our latest project – a pocket park underneath sycamore trees where we’re showcasing the beauty of local ‘urban wildflowers’ (aka weeds). Join us for a cup of tea and cake, featuring ingredients from the garden.

We’ve cleared and levelled this unloved area just off the south platform at London Road Station. It’s mostly under the shade of large sycamore trees, which makes it delightfully cool in summer heat. However, it’s a tricky site to plant. We’ve decided to use the area to plant wildflowers that tolerate shade and chalk – and in particular, to showcase our ‘urban wildflowers’, aka weeds.

Brighton Council has offered opt-outs for the spraying of pavement weeds with the herbicide Glyphosate IF street residents can commit to community weeding three times a year. In our area of Brighton, around London Rd Station, there’s a groundswell of neighbours getting together to form weeding groups.

At LRSP, we’ve always been herbicide-free, and several of us have spent happy afternoons with a hoe removing weeds from the station forecourt in Shaftesbury Place. So we’re definitely part of the community effort to weed our streets; in fact, it’s our email address LRSP@hotmail.com that is now the central contact for neighbours in our area wanting to get involved in weeding their street. The Council asks each street to have a street co-ordinator, and around 1 volunteer for every 10 houses.

So far, it’s been a very positive initiative with over 40 people volunteering to help – and counting. Shaftesbury Place, Shaftesbury Road, Stanley Road and Lorne Road are already in a position to apply for an opt-out.

And just how hard is it to remove street weeds? Well, I thought I’d give it a go this morning. It took me 5 minutes to remove – by hand, no tools – all the weeds on the pavement outside my house. The ground is fairly wet, the weeds are young. It’s a great time to get rid of them.

And in terms of biodiversity, it was quite a haul. What are weeds if not urban wildflowers? I think I identified eight different species, and that’s just outside one house. (I used my phone app and wildflower guides – there may be misidentification). They all have lovely common names and nerdy but useful Latin names. Here we go …

Trying to identify the plants does make weeding interesting, but also reminds us what we’re destroying; so … better our ‘knowing destruction’ than just blitzing with glyphosate?

Do get in touch (LRSP@hotmail.co.uk) if you live in the area of London Road Station, Brighton, and Ditchling Rise – and would like to join the weeding volunteers.

Ok so spring officially starts on 21st March but the plant world is already waking up. We even saw some sunshine in Brighton last week.

And small changes are evident in the London Road Station gardens. Lettuce seeds have germinated – woohoo! It doesn’t look like much but the little green and dark red dots will become tasty salad leaves very shortly.

We’ve also started our ‘infrastructure’ works. We have a new wooden raised bed in which to grow ornamental flowers, rather than veg, up the fencing of the edible growing plot. Last year’s sweet peas in this area were much remarked upon.

And we’ve done some work in the Pocket Park. The plan is to try to develop the area with woodland wildflowers that tolerate shade. A couple of weeks back we tried an experimental sowing of specialist seeds for deep shade wildflowers.

I’ve also been collecting urban wildflower plants (aka flowering weeds 🌱😊) from my garden and around the area. We have herb robert, green alkanet, comfrey, borage, campanula, celandines, violets, geums, geraniums, toadflax, bluebells and many more, all local plants to be transplanted to the Pocket Park. Now we just need a little less rain and a little more sun.

We’ve been working recently with Southern Railway to create a pocket park at London Rd Station. We’re hoping it will be a little oasis of shade and wildflowers where neighbours can sit out, particularly in the hotter summer months. Let us know what you think …

It all came about when a neighbour, John, asked if it was possible to access a derelict area on the south sided the station. Peering through the fencing all we could see was rubble, dead branches, overgrown brambles and an old hut which had been repeatedly tagged.

But Southern have allowed us to access the site, and John got going on clearing the area. It’s about 75 square metres with quite a few trees. There were huge amounts of litter, old wood, barbed wire, concrete and general junk to be cleared (including the remains of a car bonnet buried underneath the ivy!).

And then, as part of a project ‘Grow Wild on the Railway’, the tagged shed got a makeover from two talented artists, Esther and Mia, recently graduated from Kingston University.

This lovely design, in colours that work well in a shady area, was inspired by a workshop with members of the station partnership. Mia and Esther had us drawing wildflowers, looking at bold shapes and colours.

We’re now onto the next stage: trying to get funding to regenerate the area further: install trellising, plant a shady wildflower area, get some seating and picnic tables and make some woodchip paths. We hope to have the pocket park up and running in the spring.

We’d love to hear from neighbours about any ideas you might have for our London Rd Station pocket park …

We thought, for example, that it would be great to have some artwork from local artists displayed on this wall … (By the way, we think that’s the old terracotta-coloured paint from the 1990s when the whole station was painted that colour).

And if you’d like to get involved with helping regenerate the site, please get in touch. We’re going to need some people power to make this all happen!