London Road Station Partnership Blog

Our foxgloves in west planter June 2015 (@LondonRdLAT)

Though we tend to focus on our edible growing plot, we love our platform planters and the tree pits outside London Road Station.

The platform planters are quite shady while the tree pits are in full sun, with young trees greedy for moisture: a challenge for planting on both scores. But what’s been chastening – putting us gardeners in our place – is just how joyfully wayward the plants in these areas seem to have been.

First candidate for plant bloodymindedness: our foxgloves. Tolerant of shade, pretty robust and attractive to bees, these were supposed to be the showpiece of our platform planters last year. They did nothing but put on leaf and sulk, though inexplicably one decided to flower in November.  This year, though, they sprung up all ebullient with a lovely show of flowers, as in the photo above tweeted by @LondonRdLAT.

‘Nick’s’ planter with new nicotanias July 2015

We did think about trying to cut back their crazy spires and make them all neat and tidy, but the bees were clearly having a great time in the ‘gloves’, so we left them until all the flowers had disappeared. Philippa and I took them out last Thursday. We replaced them with nicotanias we had grown from seed and hope they’ll survive the strong winds.

Verbena bonariensis August 2014

Next up are the verbena bonariensis in the tree pit on the right side of the station building in Shaftesbury Place. Last year, we planted a lot of verbena – they self-seed in my garden – and they performed beautifully, waving purple heads in the wind.

This year, we counted on self-seeded plants doing the work again for us – but no! Like a cat ignoring the basket thoughtfully purchased by its owner, our verbena

Verbena bonariensis outside treepit and red poppies inside  June 2015

have decided they like growing just outside the tree pit. You can see the line of strong plants just outside the wooden frame in the photo. We’ve left them to grow on, admiring their chutzpah. On Saturday, I teased out a few for taming and have potted them on.

And just look at the colour of those poppies: strong blood red, not the usual orange-red or floaty pink . Neighbours have admired them and asked for seed. But we don’t really know where they came from. I know we’ve scattered odd packets of seed around the tree pits, including some poppy seed. What makes me smile is that had we deliberately set out to grow these poppies, they probably wouldn’t have taken half as well. We took them out last week as they had finished flowering, but shook the seed heads over the tree pits. We’ll see what happens next year.

Marigolds and verbena bonariensis in the ‘traffic calming’ planters

Finally, it’s a relief this summer not to be trying to water the four large black planters at Preston Circus. They’ve been ‘decluttered’ from Preston Circus but set to work on traffic calming in Viaduct Road. When I passed them back in June, I did however feel a certain nostalgia for the evenings of slopping watering cans from Calvary Church across to the islands in the middle of the streams of traffic. What was lovely to see was the amazing growth of colourful flowers in the planters: marigolds, nasturtiums and plenty of … verbena bonariensis. I’ve asked around: nobody is owning up to guerrilla gardening, so I can only conclude that the planters have done their own thing and self-seeded from the plants that grew there last year. Humbling and inspiring!

Obsessing about the weather seems like a feature of gardening life. This has certainly been true these last few weeks. We’ve had beautiful sunshine and warmth for about two weeks: a lovely hot late June. But with that has come the worry about water. We rely on our water butts for watering the gardens at London Road Station and now there are the tree pits and the platform planters that require attention.

The water butts have already run dry once three weeks ago. Last Wednesday on the hottest day ever recorded in the UK for July our water butts ran dry again in the edible plot. And of course July is holiday time, so it’s been tricky coordinating our watering rota. I was in despair. We moved plants that we could (our tomatoes) out of the sun into as much shade as we could get.

This morning I was planning a garden version of a gym workout, moving around 200 litres of water from my water butts into those of the station garden: that’s a short walk with 20 watering cans, one in each hand ten times over. Hey, people do weights for 30 minutes in the gym, so why not a more functional exercise?

I had just finished watering the greenhouse when the rain started. The odd thing was my immediate illogical reaction: oh no! it’s raining just when I need to be out porting water into the station garden! Wet but wiser, I praised the weather for relieving me of my onerous task.

This is often how it is: just when we think there will be no more water for a while and all our plants will die, it rains … hard. I’ve been glued to my weather forecast ap for the last few days, but this fortuitous downpour was not on the horizon. Thank-you weather! Just goes to show: never give up!

Another year figuring out how to construct a bean support

So far it’s been a really wonderful start to the gardening year. Everything is in bloom. We’ve had warmth and some rain. OK, so tomato seedlings are now starting to sulk a bit because the sun hasn’t consistently been shining, but beans and courgettes are growing happily and our fruit trees are looking magnificent.

The edible garden is really filling up. We’ve planted our sweet corn, our courgettes and beans in the central bed. We’ve got lovely chard in the back central bed and we’ll plant some more beans tomorrow. The shady leaf bed now has sorrel, leeks, chives, parsley, variegated sorrel and our replanted mint. Where are we going to put cavalo nero? Probably in the place of the variegated sorrel which all of us find unpalatable and attracts aphids.

Under the far apple tree, our oriental leaves are going strong, despite numerous thinnings. Madeleine’s beetroot seedlings are growing on, as are the leeks. We’ve got dwarf peas in pots and courgettes in the middle orchard bed, and then a new strawberry bed underneath the pears. We’ve planted lettuces in a window box and renewed our herbs.

The new green shoots of our plum tree

Our fruit trees this year seem to be growing very strongly. The pear nearest the gate is covered in fruit; the next one in is a little less vigorous – it’s got a bit of leaf curl and it’s deformed the lower fruitlets. I’ve just taken off the mottled leaves and pinched off the deformed fruitlets.

The apples are far less infested with aphids than last year, though I need to get up a ladder to spray and squidge the infestations at the top of the trees. I’ve been rubbing out the growing tips of new shoots on the plum, and to some extent on the apples and pears, to stop them growing more branches. It looks like we should have good fruit on the apples and pears, but perhaps less on the plums. We’ll see …

We had a good session on Sunday cutting back the shrub overgrowth on the Brighton Greenway. As the shrubs had grown outwards, so people had started moving off the path, and so a new pathway was taking shape. With the buddleia and cornus now under control, the pathway feels much easier to walk. Sadly, the graffiti is back on the arches.

We were around ten people, including a couple of campers from the camp set up by homeless people on the Greenway. They’ve pitched their tents in a tightly defined area between the fossil seats. Their help on Sunday, but also clearing litter during the week, has been much appreciated.

Wild ginger and cow parsley on New England Road bank

As the Brighton Greenway was planned to be a wildlife corridor as well as a human amenity, it was lovely to see the native wild flowers coming through. The bank by the steps up to the Greenway from New England Road is now covered with wild ginger (probably Asarum europeaum) which grows so well in shady areas, together with pungent cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris). After the bridge there are clumps of nettles, red campion (silene dioca) and ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolata). And slightly further on, there are drifts of cowslips (primula veris). It’s some time since I’ve seen this plant in an urban environment; it declined seriously in the 1970s and 1980s but has since made a comeback.

Cow slips, ivy and galium

Further up the Greenway, the Council have spread rough soil and ‘wildflower’ seed mix. The ‘wildflower’ border has been spectacular in previous years but quite a few of the flowers  aren’t really native; for example, the pink Cosmos is originally from Mexico. The ox-eye daisies, poppies and blue chicory are. The challenge of ‘wildflower’ borders is always getting the right balance: typically, one species will overpower others after the first spectacular year. We’ll see what this year brings.

Red campion and more wild ginger

Along with others, we’ve formed Friends of Brighton Greenway as a group to help maintain and develop the Greenway.

Come along to our Inaugural AGM where there will be an opportunity to talk about some future plans: MONDAY 18 May, 7.30pm, Clarendon Centre, CCK, 47 New England Street.

There were very warm sunny days in April, it was then suddenly cool again but very dry, and now in May, lots of rain (at last) but an evil wind. Seeds germinated happily, but seedlings then sulked a bit due to the cold and now we’re ready to plant after the rain, the wind is torturing small plants. Looking back over this blog, it’s clear that every year has brought its challenges. This year at least, we are blessed with an evidently reduced snail population and no sign so far of aphid infestation.

Typically in April and May, I’m trying to catch up with myself. We’ve done lots of work in the gardens over the last month or so and I’ve not had time to update the blog.

In the shady garden, lush greenery is coming back and I think our star plants this spring are the orange-red heuchera I planted last summer. Heuchera all over the place are very happy, bringing purple, rich red and bronze into the otherwise dominant green of the shady garden. I propagated a lot after my potted collection was decimated by vine weevil last autumn so there are more to plant.

Our main campaign has focused on getting rid of the sycamore seedlings. Was it because of a windy year last year, or have conditions been such that the little helicopter seeds germinated strongly this year? There are colonies and colonies of them. Sue went for them yesterday with her characteristic vigour.

In the edible plot, Maggie and Tobias have planted up a new strawberry bed, we’ve got dwarf peas in pots growing under two apple trees, Madeleine is still willing the beetroot seed to germinate in the far ‘orchard’ bed, while the oriental leaves are providing wonderful additions to salads and the leeklets are holding their own.

The far central bed is planted up with chard and the shadier left-hand bed under the wall now has our mint bed (with Mark in mind), our strange variegated sorrel (how do we use this? it tastes awful but looks pretty), a rosemary plant desperate for transplanting, chives, parsley, leeks and standard sorrel.

The star experiment this year is our central sunny bed where we are trying out the ‘three sisters’ method: beans, squash/courgette and sweet corn. The sweet corn and courgettes went in yesterday after we’d spent the previous week mixing in lots of compost. I wondered about delaying planting but was reassured that corn at least is a prairie plant and should be able to withstand blustery conditions. Beans thus far have not been enthusiastic and have only just germinated: we’ve learned to be cautious about planting out too early.

And with Marlene yesterday, we sowed marigold seed and planted up the right hand tree pit in front of the station with some pansies. Tobias also potted up the two long-suffering rosemary plants, grown from cuttings back in 2013, which have been root-bound in a window box for over a year! Liberation for these generally well-tempered plants. I promised to make rosemary biscuits for next week’s session.

We’ve drawn up our outline planting plan for 2015 for the edible growing plot. The big news is that we’re going to try ‘three sisters’ planting: sweet corn, climbing beans and courgettes/squash. The idea is that these three plants help each other. The corn provides a structure for the beans to climb, the beans fix nitrogen in the soil and the squash/cougettes spread along the ground forming a ‘mulch’, protecting moisture in the soil and preventing weeds. We going to use the sunniest raised bed for this: we know courgettes and beans grow well and easily, sweet corn is a bit of an unknown quantity, but having just been given some sweet corn seeds, it’s definitely worth a try.

Having gone through our joint seed collection, we’ve got everything we need for the new season except … chard. We have a whole range of different climbing beans: yellow, green and purple pods. We have Italian courgettes and winter squash. We only need a few tomato plants, but we have plenty of seed. Last year’s attempts with beefsteak tomatoes were not particularly successful, so we’re back to the reliable and heavy cropping cherry tomatoes. Collectively, we have a wide range of salad leaf seeds and despite the frustrations of caterpillar invasions and tough leaves, we are going to grow cavalo nero again in the shadier raised bed at the back of the garden. Our ‘three leaf (chard, rocket, cavalo nero) three cheese’ lasagne has been a hit at two harvest suppers now, and we know it’s easy to grow.

We’re moving our strawberry bed and leaving the growing area in the second ‘orchard’ bed free for the moment for later inspiration. And we’ll no doubt be sowing some marigolds and other ‘companion’ plants to provide colour and distraction for pests. With luck, this year’s frost will have prevented the kind of aphid attack our fruit trees suffered last year but we’ll probably spray our trees next week with an organic garlic-based wash which discourages the aphids. I’m assuming, of course, that the garlic flavour will have worn off by the time we come to harvest the apples: not a great combination.

Just got this lovely video from Jo at Brighton & Hove Food Partnership about volunteering in local community gardens. Our garden is featured towards the end (remember? Jo came round to film last summer).

Take a look!

And if you fancy volunteering with us, do get in touch: lrsp@hotmail.co.uk

Last Tuesday, we ventured out into the London Road station gardens for the first work session of this year. Two of us cleared weeds and straggly plants from the raised beds in the edible growing area and dug over the soil. It’s a bit soggy at the moment and benefitted from getting some aeration. In both plots, the soil is looking rich and moist with lots of worms, thanks to our liberal layering of compost in the autumn. We also cut back the autumn raspberry canes in pots and I’ve given them a top dressing of sulphur of potash.

At this time of year, as we finally feel spring is out there somewhere but are not quite sure when it will arrive, the gardens are looking tired. We’ve been blessed these last few days in Brighton with bright days and no rain, so it was a good time to freshen the soil and bring some colour into the shady garden. Two local shops have been selling cheap and cheerful primula and I managed to pick up 16 for not very much. They are not distinguished or subtle plants, but their unashamedly bright colour is a boon in the poor light of our early spring. We planted some miniature skimmia japonica ‘Rubella’ earlier in the winter and their red flowers and glossy dark leaves work well with the reds and purples of the primula. Daffodils are in bud as is our Mahonia, bringing some splashes of yellow to the shady garden. I also think the fuchsia we planted during the early summer are going to survive: they are twiggy skeletons at the moment, but there was green wood there when I snipped off some of the spindly twigs.

Pansies, a few dwarf daffodils and primula are also flowering in our tree pits. And finally the symmetry at the front of the station has been restored. Another sorbus has been planted to replace the one which got blown down in a storm in October 2013: thank-you, Brighton & Hove Cityparks. We will look after it and water it if we don’t have much rain.

Xmas 2014 decorations at LRB

It’s that time of year. We’ve moved on from Christmas, but it’s still dark and wet. Never mind – a good time for meeting and looking forward. We’ve just had our Annual General Meeting: our report and accounts can be viewed under Documents above or by clicking here. And here are four key things we want to work on for 2015, in addition to our usual work on the edible plot and the shady triangle of shade-loving ornamental plants.

1. We hope to be bringing splashes of colour again to the area when we plant up (or renew planting in): 3 planters on station platform, the tree pits in Shaftebury Place, 2 planters at The Signalman and the hollows of the trees cut down on Ditchling Rise. We’ve overwintered and propagated lots of geraniums and fuchsias ready for late spring planting, we’ve also got alyssum seedlings on the go, ivy plants are growing well, and I’m hoping the purple red heuchera cuttings don’t get undermined by vine weevils.

Vivid colours in our platform planters

2. The big old planters we were looking after at Preston Circus are to be removed. We’ve cleared most of the plants, and we’re talking to BHCC about a new planter at the bottom of Clyde Road with more harmonious paving and a community notice board at Duke of York cinema. We’ve repotted santolina, festuca grasses, a couple of hardy chrysanthemums. Sadly, plants in the Duke of York planters had suffered from vine weevils.

Removing nettles on Brighton Greenway

3. We’re also involved with Brighton Greenway to try to make this into a really pleasant walkway up to Brighton station, as well as a thriving wildlife area and mini-park, with interpretation boards celebrating its railway heritage and possibly with some food growing. Next Action Day: Sunday 8th February 12.30 to 3.30 meet back of Clarendon Centre, BN1 4GQ. Contact Madeleine (madcary@yahoo.com) or me if you’re interested in taking part.

4. And finally … We’d like this year to get another nomination for Southern Railway’s Stars and Tsars Best Community Station award: to do this, we need to keep up efforts to tidy and improve environment at the station, and keep everybody involved in gardening, composting, events etc. We’re going to do a recce of the station and areas which need a bit of attention: the Albion in the Community group did a fantastic job clearing weeds, but they do come back, and walls by the edible plot need repainting. And there’s paint peeling away in various places – all ready for a spring spruce-up, once we get the spring.