Secret Garden Update March 2022

For those of you who don’t know, alongside our community garden in Heeley, we also have a secret garden in Dore where we grow flowers more intensively to use in our bouquets. We are only allowed a limited number of people on the site, therefore we have an amazingly dedicated team of women helping us look after the space. Since we got the keys in the Summer last year, it has been all hands on deck to get the space ready for planting for this growing season. Last year we managed to tackle the majority of the weeds and prepare the first half of the garden for filling with flowers.

This Spring, we have started the clear the back part of the garden. This is the biggest part and where most of our annual flowers will be planted. We had a full team day up there last weekend and achieved so much! I honestly thought this space would take months to clear and dig, but we managed to created 12 out of 14 beds in one day! Check out the before and after below!

We are just waiting on the arrival of some more landscaping fabric to create the paths and some wooden stakes so we can create support for the flowers to grow through, before we can finish the space completely. We are so grateful to have the support of Apollo Gardening, who are so generously help us kit out the garden and make our floral dreams come true.

People attending our gardening groups and open days at Heeley are helping us sow seeds and pot on seedlings ready to be planted in this new space. Scaling up our growing is a huge challenge for us, but it feels great that we are doing it together and helping to create something super special. As always, a huge thank you to the secret garden volunteer team! Without their commitment, dedication and enthusiasm this would not be possible and I would be running around like a headless chicken! I am so excited to show you all what it looks like in a few months when this space is bursting with flowers!