Mill Lane Community Garden 
Mill Lane Community Garden This page will document the transformation from a field to a community garden, via a building site. It will be updated on a fairly regular basis,
especially following any work done on the site. And rather than have a page that just goes on and on and on ...
Each calendar year's worth of progress will be made into a separate page.
Listed in reverse chronological order are details of progress on the site, which will include a few photos.
Rather than overload the progress pages with hundreds of photos, a Flickr account has been created online that will be the repository of all the photos taken, for those of you who are interested.
The photos on Flickr will be larger and will be grouped into albums that will reflect the entries below. Each sub-heading below is a link to its specific Flickr album,
which will open in a new tab. Or, if you want to see all the albums, click here.
Previous years (which will open in a new tab) can be found:
Apologies if you are having problems seeing the October images. Not sure what the problem is at the moment as I can see them on my desktop and phone but not on my laptop (although repeated refreshes seemed to help)
Today is Halloween and probably my last update as work in the garden slows and I get prepared to hibernate.
A big thank you to everyone who visited us on Tuesday for our Pumkin Carving Event. Everybody seemed to have a good time and we had some wonderful carvers.
Saturday saw our last meeting of the year for the Little Greens Garden Club. I think I can safely say that our young members have enjoyed their Saturdays in the garden and we've enjoyed hosting them.
We're looking forward to seeing them all next year. We've always room for a few more so if you would like to enroll your children give us a call or email us.
Goodness, it's the 20th October and I have yet to update the site for the current month. As you might have noticed, we've had the odd shower or two but Dave managed to find a couple of dry days
to get the grass cut; and he also chopped back the willow by the compost bins. Several wheelbarrow loads of compost have been shifted from the bins to the raised beds. We planted a peony tree and cleared the tomato plants.
It's lovely to see that our Little Greens Garden Club members don't seem to mind the wet weather.
The end of the month saw Richard brave the elements to erect our new greenhouse, bought with grants from Chinnor Open Gardens and Community Action Groups Oxfordshire.
So thanks to those two organisations and, of course, to Richard. A few pics showing the progress (with a few more on Flickr)
A few members of the Little Greens Garden Club being shown the newest addition to the garden.
With the autumn equinox just a few days away. it's time for an update.
First is the news that the Little Greens Garden Club has restarted. They seemed to enjoy themselves and, I suspect, had fun pulling that carrot!
The volunteers have been busy harvesting and tidying up the garden. And our pumkins are coming along nicely
>
Being born and bred a Londoner. I've never been very good at gardening. However, I'm sure that one of the plants below
is from another planet (and I'm not talking about the pumpkin)!
A big thank you to Emil and Dave for laying and cementing in the base for our greenhouse.
And in the last week or so of the month, we have planted (and protected) some kale:
Saturday, 13th July, saw the last meeting of the Little Greens Garden Club until September. As always we had planned tasks for the members, who seemed to have a whale of a time,
especially building a den. See you all after the summer!
Work in the garden continues apace. But the results make it all worthwhile. Why not pop along and see for yourselves.
Who knows, you might feel inspired to join our volunteers!
Goodness! One of our volunteers worked really hard to empty a large compost container and spread its contents onto a bed - all on his own! I am shattered just typing about it.
Please forgive me if I am repeating myself but the members of the Little Greens Garden Club are really enjoying their time in the garden..
A quick update to say that we took part in Chinnor Open Gardens and would like to thank everyone who visited us over the weekend. As usual we had lots of plants available in exchange for donations.
The garden was a bit quiet this year, presumably down to the unseasonable weather and there being lots of other gardens to visit, so we had a few plants left over!
As I have said before, the Little Greens Garden Club is proving very popular with the children (and some of the parents as well 😀). 1st June saw them planting their pea plants in the ground.
Their area in the garden is looking lovely.
First things first, I am delighted to report that the Little Greens Garden Club has proven a great succcess. A huge "well done" to everyone involved and a big thank you to all our enthusiastic young gardeners.
As you can see, one of their "tasks" was to make some scarecrows - and what a fantastic job they did!
Despite the weather, we've been kept busy (in those rare moments between all that rain 😀) doing jobs like:
weeding the bed around fruit trees;
doing some hard landscaping; potting up tomatoes; doing a bit more weeding, this time in the top bed; followed by yet more weeding; planting more spinach in the gaps; planting a pot of basil and a pot of coriander;
rehousing at least 50 slimy snails; lifting the purple broccoli; digging in compost & planting courgettes; digging over the bed for cabbages and placing a cage over the area (cabbages now planted); potting up 3 pepper plants;
and lots more but I'm tired out just typing about it! Quite how our volunteers do so much beats me.
Gosh! Tomorrow is 1st May. Where has April gone?
The last Saturday of the month saw us host our Seed and Plant Swap. Thank you to those of you who came along. It seemed to go very well!
Here are a couple of photos of the calm before the storm (metaphorical rather than meteorological I'm happy to say).
Earlier, the members of our Little Greens Garden Club enjoyed their latest vist to the garden. A couple of them trimmed some long grass while others started to prepar their area in one of the beds.
The eagle-eyed among you might notice the painted pebbles used to mark the start of their area.
It's the middle of the month and it is time for an update.
Spring has definitely sprung and the garden is looking lovely with the bulbs coming out and blossom on the trees. Our hardworking volunteers have also planted beetroot, corinander, spinach and chard.
They even found time to plant the wildflower seeds to encourage the bees and the butterflies.
Our new venture, The Little Greens Garden Club, started this month. The first meeting saw the children plant cress seeds. Then this last Saturday they painted stones that will be used to mark out their planting area in the garden.
April also marked the reopening of the garden every Saturday from 12:30-4pm, please feel free to drop by and say hello.
It's the end of March and a quick thank you to all the families that paid us a visit as part of the Jack and Jill Easter Trail. Happily the sun was shining. Alas, only a few photos as our volunteers were kept very busy.
And despite the seemingly never ending rain, the garden is certainly suggesting that Spring really is with us. We've also been able to replace our broken down mower with
a brand new one, thanks to receiving our Co-op Local Community Fund Grant.
It's March and Spring is allegedly just a couple of weeks away. We held our annual Mothers Day event on Saturday 9th and
were rewarded with a number of visitors. Many thanks to all who came. I hope you enjoyed the garden, and the tea and cakes!
Here are a couple of photos of our volunteers getting ready for the event plus one of the activity table:
It might be mid-February but our intrepid volunteers have already been busy in the garden.The strawberries that were in the top bed have been dug up and temporarily replanted into pots. The front left raised
bed that contained herbs has been dug over and we've planted some sage and lavender. Finally we have placed the two slow worm mats from BBOWT. Looks like 2024 is officially up and running in the garden!
January 2024
January has been a quiet time in the garden, but a lot has been going on in the background!
The volunteers have been reflecting on what grew last year and how we can make the garden flourish for the year ahead with different vegetables and a rotation plan for all the areas.
On the job list is to add perennials to the rose bed. If you have any perennials going spare such as salvias, alliums, lilies, foxgloves, asters, dahlias, rudbeckia, cosmos, delphinium,
echinacea, it would be appreciated if you could donate them to the garden.