2021 wasn’t such a bad year, or was it? Well, we were locked down until April so we didn’t start any kind of activity until well into May, which meant we missed those crucial months of preparing and planting. True, we sowed seeds and in May/June we managed to plant a range of vegetables: potatoes, beans, courgettes, lettuces. However, 2021 was a year which wrong-footed many a gardener: it was too dry too early (April), too wet and cold (May), too stormy and unpredictable (June), too hot and then too grey (July/August). Getting seeds and seedlings to grow seemed to take for ever.

But we did have a reasonable crop of potatoes, we had some beans, we had some pears and some apples – nothing like in 2019 or 2020, though – and our courgettes were miserable. We did manage a harvest supper very late on at the beginning of November – something of a token affair in terms of produce (i.e. using fruit and veg we had grown even if it wasn’t actually from the garden) though nothing token about the sentiment or enjoyment behind it.

In our anniversary year, we planted a celebratory crab-apple in a rubbish bin. Our 9-year-old plum tree, which had burst out of its rubbish bin, was re-housed thanks to clever carpentry and has hopefully been rejuvenated by an August pruning from our friends at Brighton & Hove Permaculture Trust. The salad leaf seeds we sowed on the off chance in September have germinated and are growing well, now fleeced up from the frost. We planted onions in the autumn, which are coming up now.

Looking forward to 2022, it’s great to get into the gardens to see what needs doing. The mini-orchard of cordoned fruit trees will be 10 years old in March and they require a solid prune, both now and in late summer. Simon has replaced a collapsed herb planter, so we need to replant that. We need some colourful planting in the platform planters and the tree pits at the front of the station, though we’ve discovered that osteospermums seem to survive our winters quite well and should flower again soon. And the shady garden probably needs a bit more attention, though mulching with lots of our compost really seems to have helped prevent the soil drying out.

Just before Christmas, someone decided to try to uproot the lime-green conifer planted in a ceramic pot in the shady garden – they must have thought they have it as a Christmas tree. The conifer resisted but is badly damaged – so there’s some replanting to be done there too. Sadly we’ve seen a lot more damage to our planting over the last few years – finding a recently planted rosemary bush uprooted and thrown on top of the disused phone booth was the most incongruous. But there’s hope – newly installed benches and shelters at London Rd Station might just mean that people don’t sit on the plants in our platform planters. Here’s to 2022 – Happy New Year!