Wendell Park Gardening Friends

Our Picnic Project has begun! Over two Saturday sessions, a great group of families and local residents have turned up to get stuck in. The Picnic Project is a plan to grow flowers and edibles, including berry bushes, strawberries and herbs along the border of the dog-free zone, a popular picnic spot with young families.

Toddlers, children and adults have been working alongside each other to transform the edge along the fence. Mulch and cardboard provided by Hammersmith and Fulham council has been used to start the no-dig beds.

No-Dig is a gardening philosophy that aims to leave the life under the soil as undamaged as possible. By leaving the structure of the soil intact and the organisms undisturbed, we are holding on to the moisture and carbon that has been building up. The cardboard starves any grass or weeds of light and the mulch does the same job as well as acting like a rich fertilising blanket. This blanket will hopefully help in any drought conditions over the summer by trapping the moisture already underground and feeding the plants and organisms beneath.

By protecting the soil and the life that grows in it, we will also help achieve one of the main goals of the project, getting children up close and personal with nature. If we boost the worms, bugs, birds, plants and fruits, children will have something real to experience with all their senses. A tiny strip of wild in the heart of West London.

Parents have commented on how excited their children have been while collecting mulch, wheel-barrowing it around and starting over again. Some children held handfuls of worms for the first time.

Now our fruiting bushes and plants have arrived, it’s time to get the plants in the ground!

Last year was a challenge with the long, hot summer followed by a very wet autumn. There is no official park gardener and the volunteers have done their best to keep leaves and weeds at bay. Thanks to everyone, including the young people who have joined us on their Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme.

WPGF and LBHF are committed to more diverse perennial planting, to attract birds, bees and other insects.

The triangular flower bed surrounding the Caltalpa stump near Cobbold Rd entrance, is soon to be replanted with several different Viburnums, some Cornus to catch the winter light and a Cornus kousa. Later in spring, the under-planting will be a palette of blues, purples, yellows, white and green.

Shrubbery on the south bed has been thinned to allow in more light. Towards the western end of the fenced south bed, there will be some replanting where privet shrubs have been removed. The south bed is testing because of the tree canopy and the dry soil.

The Wendell Road entrance beds feel neglected since Steve the gardener left, and volunteers are needed to take on improvements. Do get in touch.

We welcome your gardening expertise, your time, your views and comments and we thank you for your continued support.

Thank you so much to the enthusiastic, vivacious and cheerful corporate volunteers from L’Oréal (Hammersmith) who generously donated their time and energy on Friday 3rd September and to the delightful group of Commercial Real Estate agents from Avison Young in Gresham Street who put in a stellar shift on Wednesday 6th October.

The teams of volunteers worked incredibly hard, scrubbing down and repainting the railings on the Hartswood Roadside of the park, as well as clearing ivy from the eastern wall, cutting back, pruning and tidying, and judging from the photos had a lovely time doing it!.

Many thanks also to idVerde Employee Volunteering section and Groundworks for coordinating the event and for supplying all the necessary materials.

This year, Hammersmith and Fulham Council is taking part in Plantlife’s “No Mow May” initiative. The initiative encourages participants to lock away their mowers for the entirety of May to allow lawn plant species (e.g. daisies, clovers) to flower. Plantlife scientists have shown that arresting mowing for just these four weeks can increase nectar production for pollinators tenfold. The Council will be participating in the initiative on a trial basis in all of its parks and open spaces (including your own), with the exception of sports pitches. Contractors will conduct a catch up cut in June.

LBHF are participating in this trial for three main reasons:

1. Relaxed mowing regimes, especially in the Spring growing season, benefit biodiversity. They are trialling this approach as one of the Council’s actions to restore ecology in the Borough;
2. A number of Friends groups (including WPGF) have voiced concerns about the significant impacts of the increased footfall over the past year; this will hopefully go some way to allowing our parks to recover;
3. The initiative leads in to the Plantlife citizen science campaign Every Flower Counts, which provides a good opportunity to engage residents on ecology.

Plantlife is a British conservation charity working nationally and internationally to save threatened wild flowers, plants and fungi . They own nearly 4,500 acres of nature reserve across England, Scotland and Wales and have 11,000 members and supporters. You can read more about Plantlife here

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Thanks to for the generous support of our Spacehive benefactors, Wendell Park Gardening Friends managed to source 100m of secondhand cast iron railings which we found through a scrap metal dealer in Staffordshire.

The supplier generously agreed to re-weld the panels to meet our specifications and also included two gates, one for each end, to allow parks maintenance and the Gardening Friends access to the borders.

The railings were installed over the course of three very snowy days in February by council contractors, and within the space of a week, its impact was noticeable, with new shoots and bulbs appearing which would otherwise have been trampled by children or dogs.

We have kept a large zone of shrubbery at the western end of the border unfenced as it is always a popular area for children to playing hide and seek and to building dens.

At the beginning of March, we put in nearly £500 of new shrubs and plants to replace those that had been lost last year. It has been really gratifying to have received so much positive feedback from passers-by who can already see how much happier the plants are looking.

You can see the Spacehive Project Delivery Report here

An article published last month in The Garden (the Royal Horticultural Society’s monthly magazine) confirmed what we have all found to be true; that there is a proven link between Community Gardening, wellbeing and good mental health.

“At a time when isolation is still being enforced to varying degrees [community gardening initiatives] have never seemed more important in helping build social connections and make new friends”

You can read the article here …

Wishing all our Gardening Friends a happy, healthy, safe and green-fingered New Year!

We are now looking to install low metal railings to protect to the borders, allowing new plants to establish so that we can continue too make the park more beautiful. These railings will also prevent dogs and footballs from damaging the habitats that have been created for insects and invertebrates. What we’ll deliver:

• Install 50m of low bow-topped railings
• Improve the soil with 2 tonnes of rotted horse manure
• Remove and replace plants and shrubs lost to damage

Why it’s a great idea:

This project will; –

• Embellish and improve the existing park infrastructure
• Protect the herbaceous borders allowing new planting to establish and thrive
• Protect the environments that have been created for insects and invertebrates
• Reduce the amount of litter in the borders

Steps to get it done:

• Secure funding for the railings
• Installation of the railings
• Procurement of plants to replenish lost stock
• Replanting the border

Please support our campaign by pledging contributions, no matter how small, on our crowdfunding page here! 

Sadly, the arrival of coronavirus and the subsequent lockdown measures put in place by HMG put the kibosh on our monthly gardening mornings, although you would know it looking at the park today wit the herbaceous borders putting on a display almost worthy of RHS Chelsea – well not quite, but nonetheless a vast improvement on years past before the dreadful snowberry was ripped out! In fact, the park has never seemed busier than it is right now, partly of course because access to the playground is still restricted; but also, we hope because it has become such a delightful place to be.

You will have noticed new fencing around the bed by the Wendell Road gate. This was installed by idverde on behalf of LBHF at our request – we felt it was a good idea to deter our canine friends from leaving their calling cards at the front door as soon as they came into the park; that bed will now stand a better chance of flourishing and we hope that it can become a “statement” border in due course.

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The herbs planted in the narrow strip that runs along Cobbold Road are taking off very well, as are the seeds planted last year by the children of Wendell Park School. And the North Border, behind the fallen tree was truly magnificent in the spring with wonderful daffodils, narcissi, camellias and magnolias, followed on by euphorbias, irises, roses, salvias, azaleas and clematis to name just a few of the plants and shrubs that have transformed that area.

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We have been busy keeping our twitter and instagram feeds updated – do follow them for more regular posts about what is happening in the park.

We really hope to be able to announce the resumption of regular gardening sessions before long!