Paradise Garden

We started Paradise Garden today. This meant cleaning out under the fire escape stairs, re-potting plants and making stencils, wind chimes and mobiles to decorate it.

We had plants donated by Trees for Cities and some also grown by ourselves and paint and art materials from the Scrap Project. After that all we needed to buy on the day was more compost and some bamboo.

Emma, Thomas, Josh & Craig then concentrated on preparing the plants using the compost to fill some of the large planters of potatoes and attaching bamboo to the tomato plants so they weren't bending under their own weight.

As well as this the area was cleaned and swept, holes had to be bored into the large planters for drainage and everything watered.

Sarah, Georgi and Kelly made stencils and mobiles. Georgi began the pain staking task of making a Paradise Garden stencil and Sarah finished it. Kelly worked on glass painting a wind chime and sewing foam letters into a mobile.

Thomas, Emma, Craig & Josh L & Josh S braved the terrifying garden inhabitants including a "very very big spider" (according to Thomas) and some tadpoles or other similar water creatures in a basin that had obviously been left out too long in our British summer.

After all the hard work Josh & Josh worked hard in the kitchen to make Pasta with tuna, mayo & sweetcorn (even some without sweetcorn for the 'allergic to vegetables Thomas') and we all enjoyed stuffing our faces.

In our garden so far we have the following:

• parsley (yeuch why do people put it on baked potaotes?)
• rosemary (that's more like it)
• oriental basil (same as ordinary basil but more purple & pungent)
• dwarf beans (same as ordinary beans but smaller)
• tomatoes
  
• chillies
• potatoes
• chard (I have never heard of it before either)
• a melon plant (don't ask)
• a very very big spider
• tapoles
  
• some flies (less as the spider gets bigger)
  

Ainslies strawberries haven't made it although John's seedling tomatoes are still indoors and may join the bigger tomato plants when they grow some more. The mushrooms were a complete disaster because they needed to be in a dark environment and watered constantly but as they couldn't be seen no one remembered to water them...sorry mushrooms!

This photo is for Gina...Craig's mum...just to show her that he does know how to use a sweeping brush!

Oh and this was all in an afternoon before Sarah donned her uniform to go off to work at Waitrose's and she and everyone else picked up their camping equipment to pack that evening to go camping next morning!