London In Bloom!

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TWO Awards for Duncan Terrace Gardens!

Duncan Terrace Gardens won TWO Awards in the London-wideLondon in Bloom Competition!
 
A GOLD for Best Small Park in London 2019
 
AND
 
A top, level-five OUTSTANDING Award in the Its Your Neighbourhood category.
 
Islington Gardeners also wonderfully won a Gold and were joint winners in the City category. There were of course other great Islington successes, the full list and photos will be uploaded here shortly: ) 
Many thanks to all our wonderful volunteers and supporters AND to our friends & colleagues at Islington Parks – without whom this achievement would have been impossible!

Party on Down!

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We had a great day –  full of sunshine, fun and games, art stalls, cakes and plants galore and a lot of THANK YOUs to deliver – especially to everyone who came and made it such a special day!

Thanks as well to Anneke, Caroline, Ciara, David,  Markus,  James and Tom, who helped make the whole thing happen… Lots more help on the day made it all run smoothly –  Brian, Jonathan, Richard, Simon, to name a few…. Thanks too to Anneke for running the cakes stall and to Ciara, Tom and Amy for running the  hugely popular horticulturally-inspired arts stall – we had butterflies and bees in 3D and inspired water colour works courtesy of our budding artists! Thanks too to Martin Klute for joining us, in what we know was a very busy day.

Headline support from Hugh Grover Associates [https://www.hughgrover.co.uk/]  made it all happen and was greatly appreciated; as were the delicious sandwiches, cakes, tortilla and more from the Duncan Terrace Cafe [http://www.duncanterrace.co.uk/] on City Rd and the wonderful drinks from Cawston Press [https://cawstonpress.com/] – both of which were provided free-of-charge to all our guests.

Andrew and Chris joined us from Islington Parks, with all sorts of games for the many children who were there on the day… and we also had young and old playing Connect4 and Giant Jenga, courtesy of Hugh…

Lorimer and Denam kept the party going with some great music selections and Simon finished the day off with the Raffle and some great prizes! Nobody lost their tickets and it was great to see such good prizes being taken away.  

What a wonderful celebration and what a great day!

 

Preparing for Summer

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Earlier in June we had a day adding new plants to the beds to get the gardens looking beautiful and ready for summer!

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A wheelbarrow full of Viburnum Opulus being carried into the gardens!

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Clare, the community lead on the gardens, and Noah, a volunteer, carefully placing ferns (Latin name – Polypodium Vulgare) throughout the beds ready to be planted.

The next opportunity for planting is our gardening day this Saturday 29th July!  The weather forecast suggest temperatures might hit 30 degrees – come along and enjoy the sunshine with us! Hope to see lots of you there.

Launch of Islington in Bloom in Duncan Terrace Gardens!

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The Mayor of Islington with two of our youngest visitors of the day!

As well as all the fun of juggling, yoga, mini-cycling, the Garden Classroom, painting and drawing, we were treated to delicious sandwiches and  cakes from Sandra at the Duncan Terrace Cafe.

Below,  Councillor Claudia Webbe, Executive Member for Environment & Transport at Islington Council, with Frank, Islington Parks Service, who leads our horticultural team at Duncan Terrace Gardens and myself.

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Councillor Webbe came to help us launch Islington in Bloom. She was  very interested in our Community Garden project at Duncan Terrace & Colebrooke Row Gardens and was very glad to see the progress we had made. She had lots of good ideas which she shared with us before she headed off to see other Islington in Bloom launch events.

Here is a great group picture – from the left, Andrew Hillier, Acting Assistant Parks Manager for Islington South, me, Jeff, one of our brilliant volunteers, Councillor Webbe, Frank and Ciara, another of our wonderful volunteers. At the rear, our very special guest juggler!

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It was lovely to see lots of our regular park users, our volunteers & supporters, so many of the Islington Parks team and many new friends who were keen to learn more and enjoy the day with us. All in all, a wonderfully sunny and successful day!

 

March 02; Community Gardening Day

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We had a great day – we have created a brand new bed full of all sorts of wonderful plants – come and see! We will be posting pictures as the bed develops, but here are a few for now.

Below are some of the plants – and links to them – that we planted. Most of these went in the long bed on the Colebrooke Row side from Duncan St down to the first gate but others were planted elsewhere in the Gardens :