Gardening update

We have made great strides this summer and autumn improving the planting in Arlington Square, especially the perimeter borders. Our leading local horticulturist Paul Thompson has advised us on the best plants and bulbs to create a successful year-round show for years to come.

This summer saw the flowering of some interesting new additions to the square, such as Magnolia wieseneri, with large stronglyscented cup-shaped flowers, and Calycanthus chinensis with white flowers rather like a camellia. Some of our winter flowering camellias are now blooming in various shades of pink. These will provide a little colour during the long wait till the first snowdrops bloom. Other sources of late colour have been the woodland cyclamens with white or pink flowers and marbled leaves that look like ivy. These plants like nothing better than dry soil at the base of a shady tree – perfect for Arlington Square. More autumn colour has been added by the bright blue asters, mostly of a type called Little Carlow. Together the cyclamens, camellias and asters provide a late shot of colour but we’ll be looking at enhancing this next year by planting more late flowers.

As many of you will have smelt, over one wet weekend in November, with the help of three Park Rangers and some dedicated volunteers we spread 15 tonnes of Ecopark compost kindly delivered by Islington Council (picture). To put it to good use, we then proceeded to plant another 5,000 bulbs in the square. We hope that a spring showing of bluebells, snowdrops and yet more daffodils will have been worth those few days when the Arlington air took on a whiff of the countryside.

By the way, our resident horticulturalist Paul Thompson has devoted so much personal time to improving our local green spaces that he has now left the world of environmental consultancy and set up his own gardening design/maintenance business. It just shows what volunteering for the Arlington Association can lead to.

In October, volunteers who turned up for our monthly gardening morning in the square were rewarded with a cocktail party, thanks to a generous ‘Celebrate Your Space’ grant from the Community Spaces Team at Groundwork UK. And celebrate we did, with a fine sandwich lunch and cocktails expertly mixed by neighbour Panu Long.

Thanks to the N1 Women’s Institute, we will soon have different varieties of strawberry plants growing in the square’s community herb, vegetable and fruit garden. We hope they will provide us with fruit over several months and maybe a jar or two of jam. We recently planted some garlic which is already poking through the soil in the raised beds, we are expanding the number of berryyielding plants with some blackberry bushes and we now have a bed dedicated to the most popular herbs: rosemary, sage, chives and oregano. We plan to plant lettuces, cucumbers, French beans and runner beans for next summer.