Four Squares Estate: Guerilla gardening

Below my flat are two large brick raised beds for flowers.  They have a couple of sad, diseased looking rose bushes in them and a lot of weeds.  It did not take me long to get the itch to rescue them.  But where to find flowers in Bermondsey?  In Birmingham there are plant shops on just about every street plus a garden centre just behind where I live  .London is a vast urban desert with no plants.  I try Tesco, Canada Water, Jamaica Road.  Wherever I go in London I look for shops selling cheap plants.  Or any plants, with roots.  Or bulbs.    The only place I see plants in profusion is Chelsea Flower Show and they are not for sale.
  
Only in The Blue, at the small, struggling local market, can I find plug plants, sold from a barrow.  They are amazed when I buy up, at a very good price, all the plug geraniums I can carry in two large plastic bags.
I plant them out and go back for more.
Then I collect all the seed from my garden and throw it all over the beds.
Result, a fine crop of opium poppies, a few foxgloves, nasturtiums and a lot of cheerful mixed geraniums.

In the autumn I have the job of removing all the dead plants.  I plant tulip and narcissi bulbs and, in February,  I bring some snowdrops.  They all come up.

This year the Four Squares Estate renovations are all happening.  The council blocks are all covered in scaffolding and green netting.  I thought it would be dark under all the nets but it is really not too bad, and it is very exciting to see wonderful shiny new UPVC windows going in.  Suddenly the run down Four Squares is looking almost respectable.

Because of the building work I did nothing to the guerilla garden this spring.  But nature did its work for me.  A fine crop of foxgloves has taken over.














e-mail: childhoodblog@gmail.com

Tigers in Southwark Park

Bermondsey and Rotherhithe have a beautiful city park.  Southwark Park is right on the boundary between the old boroughs and there used to be a lot of in-fighting between them over its management.  Now they are both part of Southwark and the park is listed Grade II.  With Kings Stairs Gardens across Jamaica Road this green lung goes right down to the river.   Surrounded by council flats it is still like being out in the countryside.

There is quite a lot of wildlife

T

There is a bandstand from Queen Victoria's Great Exhibition, installed in 1884 and a drinking fountain..




There are two wonderful caryatids holding up nothing in the shrubbery. These come from Rotherhithe Old Town Hall, 1897, which was bombed in World War II.  In 1974 these were moved to the Heygate Estate, but now that huge council block has been demolished they are in the park

By 1885 a boating lake had been added, and there are still paddle boats for hire.

Near the lake is the oasis of Ada Salter's Garden.  Ada Salter was married to Dr. Alfred Salter.  They both worked tirelessly to improve the slums of Bermondsey, fighting disease and trying to improve the borough's housing and living spaces.  They planted the thousands of trees we still enjoy and created gren space wherever they could.  Ada became the first woman Labour Mayor in 1922, Alfred Salter became a Labour MP and both were Labour councillors.  The garden was created in memory of Ada Salter in 1934.

There are two art galleries showing pretty good exhibitions, a nice cafe, a good playground, a running track, lots of space for ball games and running around and a bowls club.  The park is used a lot by the locals especially mums with small children.

Across Jamaica Road on the Thames is Kings Stairs Gardens.  Edward III built a manor house here in the 14th century and it was used until Tudor times.  Later there was a working commercial pottery on the site.  The remains of the manor house are still there in the garden.   Here is an artist's idea of what the manor looked like.

e-mail:  childhoodblog@gmail.com