A Visit To Hawkwood Nursery

Last weekend, Marco and I went to an Open Day at our local organic nursery. Hawkwood Nursery is located in the Lea Valley area on the outskirts of London and is maintained by volunteers from OrganicLea, a food growing cooperative. They run an organic box scheme and have a café and several food stalls in the area. The fruit and veg on offer are being grown by the volunteers and are in part also provided from local people's gardens through a crop share.

The organisation started out using only an allotment, but has now acquired a big greenhouse that used to belong to the council, but fell into disuse in 2007. Here, they have started to grow plenty more fruit and vegetables, are keeping bees, and last year, they even planted a vineyard. They are trying to be sustainable, using only recycled and natural materials wherever they can.

It was a lovely sunny day when we visited, and we had a walk around the area, past vegetable patches in construction, through the vineyard and by some lovely old trees. The whole nursery seemed to burst with spring!

We were also shown how to make raised beds out of discarded scaffolding planks. You can see Marco sinking posts below! I've been thinking of building raised beds in our garden for a while and seeing how assembling the frame was surprisingly easy, I really do not have an excuse to put the project off much longer!

I also bought three tomato plants, hoping that they will resuscitate my gardening bug. It seems to have worked in part already, as I went and sowed some salad seeds that I had left over from last year straight when we got home!

© Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated)