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.














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