Local growers get help from Kew Gardens

Kew Gardens comes to Tufnell Park

As part of the partnership working between Holloway Park and Kew Gardens we were able to arrange for a Kew community gardener to come to meet with local volunteer growers and share some of their knowledge. Kew gardener Kate came to meet local residents at the Octopus Plant nursery this week. The visit was to run a workshop on pollinators for local volunteers. This is the second part of this initiative, the first being when the volunteer gardeners had a visit to Kew Gardens, which took place in March.

The Octopus Plant nursery is at Tufnell Park estate and is maintained by local volunteers including some students from Beacon High School who have been working at the nursery for six years. Helena the Community Grower working to guide volunteers said of the students who are all from years 8 & 9 that  ‘they all have different interests, for some it’s growing, or insects and wildlife, or harvesting, but they all seem to get a lot out of coming here’. You can see from the magnificent bug hotel that the local insects are very well catered for.

The workshop involved everyone learning about pollinators, the students did an identify the wildflower quiz and learnt about the different pollinators who are attracted to these flowers and the plant adaptation that  coevolved for this to happen.

Everyone who came along learnt how to make seedballs. It turns out it is not so very difficult. Jane had brought along seeds from a wildflower mix and the seeds were mixed with compost and flour and then mixed with water to bind. Once rolled into seedballs they are left to dry out and once dried out they can be distributed, in this case it will be by mindful walkers across the Tufnell Park estate, so look out for a massive increase in flowers here next year!

The Octopus nursery has visitors of all ages, including Nature Explorers, a scheme for under 5s who come in once a week from the nursery school next door. They have various schemes for volunteers and information about what they do at this plant nursery can be seen here, and everyone is welcome. Other schemes include joining the Nature Neighbourhood Volunteer team run from the Hilldrop Community Centre, details of which are shown here.