History

Our Vintage Summer Party

June 9, 2013 | Author Lydia

Our Vintage Summer Party really was an event for, by and about all ages. Children made tiny top hats and bonnets, the first workshop in our new eco-shed designed by students from London Metropolitan University. Young folk musicians Theo Bard entertained visitors enjoying delicious picnic food by caterers and early Abbey Gardens volunteers Gary and Elisabetta Andrews. Garden club leader Hamish (pictured with a giant cabbage – we do like our pictures of Hamish with giant cabbages) led a plant history tour. Illustrator Fred Apps drew visitors as characters from our history. Historian Colm Kerrigan gave a history talk, followed by Gordon Joly’s history walk. Older garden friends shared memories of the area. And president of East End WI Colleen Bowen judged the Victoria Sponge competition.

The event was also part of Open Garden Squares and the Chelsea Fringe.

A huge thank-you to everyone who made the event a success, including our hardworking volunteers and event organisers, and to London Borough of Newham for its support.

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8 June: Abbey Gardens Vintage Summer Party, Open Garden Squares and Chelsea Fringe

May 21, 2013 | Author Lydia

Abbey Gardens Vintage Summer Party Saturday 8 June 2pm-5pm: a free event for all ages

Join us for some vintage Summer fun:

Hear about our history
Join a history walk around the neighbourhood
Enter our Victoria Sponge competition
‘Where did you get that hat?’ workshop for children
Story corner with our older gardeners
Collecting our garden’s history – gathering stories
of when gardeners and friends first discovered the garden
Have your portrait drawn as a character from our local history
Enjoy a lunch of traditional dishes from our communities
Live folk music from Theo Bard
Plant history tour with garden club leader Hamish
Goodies on the honesty stall
Visit our tea stall for tea, coffee and home made cake

All activities are free. Tea, cake, lunch and honesty stall produce for donations to the garden. Cake competition entries are to be prepared in advance and brought to the garden on the day.

We are also welcoming visitors as part of Open Garden Squares Weekend 10am-5pm
and we are part of the 2013 Chelsea Fringe: Plant history tour starts 2.15pm

Thanks to designer Catherine French for the poster and flyer.

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Sunshine turns our thoughts to Summer

May 6, 2013 | Author Lydia

Everyone who walked into the garden on Saturday said how colourful it was all looking: a sea of glorious reds, yellows and oranges. With all of this colour and a bit of sunshine, our thoughts are turning to our Summer event:

Abbey Gardens Vintage Summer Party
Saturday 8 June, 2-5pm
A free event for all ages

Have some vintage Summer fun and find out about the history of the garden and our neighbourhood

Hear about our history
Join a history walk around the neighbourhood
Enter our Victoria Sponge competition
‘Where did you get that hat?’ workshop for children
Story corner with our older gardeners
Collecting our garden’s history – gathering from gardeners and friends their own stories of when they first discovered the garden
Have your portrait drawn as a character from our local history
Enjoy a lunch of traditional dishes from our communities
Live music
Garden tour with garden club leader Hamish
Goodies on the honesty stall
Visit our tea stall for tea, coffee and home made cake

All activities are free. Tea, cake, lunch and honesty stall produce for donations to the garden. Cake competition entries are to be brought to the garden on the day.

We’re also taking part in Open Garden Squares Weekend, welcoming visitors from 10am-5pm.

Posted in Events on Site, History | No Comments »

Thank you Chiltern Seeds

November 28, 2012 | Author admin

Our annual thanks goes out to Chiltern Seeds who are once again supporting Abbey Gardens with free seeds for the 2013 growing season. Chiltern Seeds have proved a very loyal supporter of our garden since the very first day of seeding all those years ago, supplying us with their wonderful organic seeds. THANK YOU – it is very much appreciated by all Abbey Gardeners.

Posted in Funding, Garden, Gardening and Horticulture, History | Comments Closed

Once upon an apple tree …

October 19, 2012 | Author admin

It started with a simple conversation with Charlie about Milk Floats and ended with an excursion to Dany’s reclaimed timber Yard on the A12, a hot cup of tea and memories of the beginnings. Four years ago during a hot summer Dany and his team build the raised beds at Abbey Gardens. Not known to myself, Dany also introduced Charlie to the garden shortly after it opened. On our quest to Milk Float knowledge we ended up reminiscing about the olden times, fond memories of the hard working French brothers and … the apple tree which once stood in the garden and had to be cut down. I was quite protective of the little apple tree and hoped we could keep it. Common sense prevailed and we replaced it with a new tree in clean soil. I wasn’t aware that at the time Nina asked Dany to hang on to the root of the old tree for ‘some kind of art project’. And so it came to be that on an autumn afternoon I was reunited with the old tree stump. On the same trip charlie took me to a forgotten garden, across the road from Danies yard which once belonged to a school. We foraged a bag full of delicious apples many of which ended up in our honesty stall on Bakers Row. This morning they were all gone – hopefully nicely shared between the increasing number of passers by.

The remains of the Old Apple Tree

Charlie foraging in a forgotten garden

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Hands-on Urbanism 1850 – 2012

March 7, 2012 | Author admin

Abbey Gardens is included in an interesting exhibition about Hands-on urbanism which will open in Vienna at the Architecture Centre on the 14th of March 2012. If you are around please drop in, have a look and let us know what you think. (address below)

”Hands-on / practical, involving action, based on active participation
Urbanism / urbanization; the culture and way of life of urban dwellers

Hands-on urbanism, bottom-up urbanism and irregular urbanization are not the exception to the rule – they are driving forces behind the urban development and often behind changes in urban policy. From the onset of industrialization, first in Europe and North America and then in the Southern hemisphere, to today’s neoliberal, developer-driven global city, the history of urban transformation processes unfolds as a sequence of critical situations. Gardening and informal settling are indicative of these crises. Taking root from below, these self-organized, self-help practices are dynamic and inspiring agencies of change” (Elke Krasny, curator)

In conjunction with the exhibition a book is published in German with Turia + Kant Verlag, Vienna and in English with MCCM Creations, Hongkong. The book contains 26 essays, including new texts, but also reprints of texts by Jane Addams and John F.C. Turner 356 pages, 300 photographs. Hopefully you can find a copy of the book in the Abbey Gardens library very soon.

Also accompanying the exhibition is a very interesting programme of events.
You can download the PDF flyer here.

Architekturzentrum Wien
Museumsplatz 1 im
1070 Wien, Österreich
T +43 1 522 31 15
F +43 1 522 31 17
office@azw.at
www.azw.at

Posted in Art, History, Press | Comments Closed

Triangle Camp Hotel

January 21, 2012 | Author admin

Abbey Gardens will be part of an exhibition in Vienna which will open in March. The theme for the show is ‘Hands-On Urbanism 1850 – 2012. The Right to Green‘

Jennie from the Stratford Archives kindly helped us with some of the historic images and unearthed this wonderful picture of the Triangle Camp Hotel. Maybe there is an idea in there baring in mind that several million visitors will come to Stratford this summer.

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The early days on film

August 8, 2011 | Author admin

Nina and Karen from Somewhere have made this wonderful film about the beginnings of the garden and the ‘What Will the Harvest be?‘ project, capturing the first season in which the garden was build up until the first harvest. It was made for and will be included in Somewhere’s current project the floating cinema which is touring the canals around the Olympic site at this very moment.

The floating cinema will join Abbey Gardens for our Harvest Festival on the 17th of September as a highlight and conclusion to the floating cinmas day long event: ‘The Green East: Garden Tours and Harvest Festival’

Posted in Abbey Gardens Products, Art, Garden, History, Progress | Comments Closed

somewhere presenting Abbey Gardens at the RCA

December 18, 2010 | Author admin

Nina and Karen from somewhere presented What Will the Harvest be? at the Sustain Talks held at the Royal College of Art in November 2010. You can now watch it on the RCA website.

Click here to view the video of the presentation

Here is a little info on the Sustain Talks series:

Sustainable art and design at the Royal College of Art
Sustain is a showcase for the work, issues and arguments that relate to the ever-more-complex arena of sustainability within the Royal College of Art. The RCA offers a unique forum: we can open up and explore issues without the pressure solely to present solutions; and we bring the ‘systems’-thinking creativity of cross-disciplinary discussion to the presentation and discussion of sustainable practice in art and design disciplines.

Sustainability represents a key emerging institutional need across the creative and cultural industries. Our goal at the RCA is to inspire and challenge a new creative generation across the UK to embrace and address sustainability in their work, demonstrating how principles of sustainability and responsibility can fuel innovation, and support and enhance real-world strategies for change.

Posted in Art, Design, Garden, History, presentations | No Comments »

Sunshine in October

October 31, 2010 | Author Ollie

Winter for me starts on the 1st of November. Something about Hallowe’en and the clocks going back in October matches the sudden shift in light during the day and coolness in the air. As October ticks away, I’m aware of this countdown to darkness and try to enjoy the outside as much as possible, which is why it was so good to drop by Abbey Gardens yesterday.

It was a beautiful, mellow day – the sun lighting up everything in a way that made us crave a nap instead of a shovel. But shovels we needed, and shoveling we did: fresh compost for the beds near the children’s (future) playhouse and other areas of the garden. Some planting also took place, notably four types of hard and soft-headed garlic. Hamish showed me how to line the cloves (we call them teeth in Portuguese) in rows, using a string held down by rocks so that they were straight, planted just under the surface and about 6 inches apart. I planted Garlic Jolimont and Illico.

As customary, some hot water was brought over from one of the Friends who live across the street and mugs of tea were passed around. Lydia baked some delicious rocket buns and brought them in a tupperware – a life saver for me. (My energy levels were low because I’d failed to have a good breakfast that morning!) She told me they were a recipe passed down her family and it got us talking about our first contact with gardening and how that had spurred a lifelong interest in it. For Lydia, it was growing up in a farm in Kent with a mother who had learned organic fruit and vegetable growing through Victorian books; for myself, it was spending the weekends outside São Paulo at the rural community where my mother’s family comes from – being surrounded by adults who knew so much about growing plants. We concluded that the children who come to Abbey Gardens will most likely grow up to be adults like us: in tune to this way of life, a love of nature handed down to them.

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