Harvest Festival

Beautiful vegetables. Our contribution to the harvest fest. Read about it below.


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Chef Martin Kroon does a demo for us. Guy Watson from Riverford Organics and Sarah Green talk to us about organic farming.


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Pics from The Duke harvest festival

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Harvest festival @ The Duke

Swap your veg for beer?! Yes please.
Sarah and I decided it was time to harvest our spinach and cavelo nero before the frosts start, but we were concerned what we would do with it all. After selling some to friends, I happened upon a poster for a veg swap day at The lovely organic pub, Duke of Cambridge in Islington, with the produce also going to local charity Shelter from the Storm, who feed and house homeless people completely through a volunteer system. Riverford Farm
donated as well as Sarah Green organics, what a great day, thank you Geetie and Dominic from the pub. We hope to be involved next year.


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Wild London green space walk

What a lovely Saturday to do a walk around Stoke Newington visiting each others green spaces. We even pitched in and helped where we could!












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Artists in residence

As part of Fransisco's youth project a group of our young folk from the estate have been applying their talents to the garden walls. They started on their designs in back in rainy June and this week between rain showers managed to get paint to panel and created some beautiful murals to brighten up the garden. What talent and enthusiasm!

Pond progress

This week Fransisco and volunteers from the London Wildlife Trust took the hole dug by the girls from City and Guilds, and turned it into a pond! We will let the water settle for a week before planting it out, but we are well on our way to a new habitat for frogs and other critters, and a beautiful contemplation spot in the corner of our garden. Thanks LWT and C&G.

Bloomsbury deliveries now underway

We have now started deliveries to the Bloomsbury area, with happy customers from the Careers Group and UCL. Bunches of spinach and cavolo nero will be on sale for £2 per bunch, delivered daily. Email us on kingscresgarden@gmail.com if you would like to join our list.

Growing strong

It is hard to believe this space was an empty patch of grass just six months ago! Despite the rainy weather, look what our members are managing to produce this year. Beautiful pumpkin and courgettes all heading for harvest in the coming weeks.

How do you like them apples?

This blog tells the overwhelmingly postive story of building a community garden on Kings Crescent. But, as anyone involved in a community project knows, it 'aint all sunshine and roses. Every now and then we have little moments that let us know that not everyone shares our vision. Over the years we have had our water supply vandalised, had our locks broken and our minor battles and arguments.

The latest sad news is the destruction of the apple trees donated by London Wildlife Trust which were growing in containers in our new garden, awaiting future planting out as part of the estate regeneration. Unfortunately, someone has stolen the containers in that half the trees were growing in. Apparently an empty yellow bucket is more valuable to them than a growing apple tree. 

The good news is that at least one of the trees looks like it will recover. We will do our best keep it alive, and keep moving forward. Out of all destruction comes new growth.

City and Guilds staff go gardening

On 27th July a team of volunteers from City and Guilds returned to help out with a few odd jobs in the new garden space. C&G were back with us after another day's hard work at the Big Dig in March. This time they painted the shed, made an excellent start on our pond (those girls can dig!) and took on the endless task of mowing and weeding. We had a well deserved BBQ lunch and all the gang went home with a small sample of our mint for making tea and cocktails! Thank-you so much folks. Another big step forward in our garden.

More photos on our facebook page.

Growing and selling

 The beds and bags we planted with seedlings from Capital Growth's 'Grow to Sell' workshop are now ready for harvest. We made our first sales of 'micro-vege' boxes to local residents Claire and Barbara.

Please let us know if you would like one of our micro boxes delivered fresh to your door by bicycle (think about how fresh you like your vege, and how long the bike ride will be...). Right now we have cavolo nero, spinach, mint, gem lettuce and spring onions on offer. 

Cutest resident?

Our shed had been in pieces for so long waiting for good weather to put it together that a local fox cub had taken up residence. The little guy didn't hang around too long once we started moving her shelter, and we have our fingers crossed she found somewhere more long term to live.

We built a shed!

 The major achievement for our June volunteer workday was putting together the shed we bought of eBay with membership fees. Andy, Emma and Thomas from London Wildlife Trust came along to help as usual, with newcomers Billy and Mateos from UCL also lending a hand. Here are some photos of the construction, and most important BBQ break. The good news is that one month on, the shed is still standing and is nice and dry inside. Good work team!

Half term youth project

designing murals for the garden fencing, planting seeds and painting flower pots!




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Kew Gardens visit with Wild London

Have a look at some pics from our visit to Kew Gardens to talk about our garden projects. Fascinating tour guided by a volunteer who's passion is trees!


















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New rainwater collection system

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Grow to sell

A couple of weeks ago Sarah attended a Capital Growth workshop in Clapham on growing to sell. The workshop focussed on increasing production of leafy vegetables that are easy to grow and are in demand. Different models of selling food were also introduced, from holding a stall outside the garden to becoming a regular supplier to a restaurant.

As part of the training course we were provided with a basic equipment to get started on a more commercial production system and in a few weeks a tray of seedlings will arrive ready to be planted out. We are hoping to use one of our beds to try our hand at commercial production, to raise some money for our garden, and to supply local food to our wider community. Watch this space!