Mill Lane Community Garden 
Mill Lane Community Garden This page documents the transformation from a field to a community garden, via a building site. It is updated on a fairly regular basis,
especially following any work done on the site. And rather than have a single 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.
Alas, the free Flickr account only allows 1000 photos. Therefore a second account has been setup for 2025 onwards.
The photos on Flickr will usually 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:
2025 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 and prior
It's the middle of May and time for an update.
First off we had a lovely visit from the 3rd Chinnor Brownies who were given an introduction to butterflies and took part in a plant hunt and biodiversity safari. Each member of the group also planted a sunflower to take home and nurture.
Our Little Greens Garden Club have been busy preparing their own area by raking and hoeing the soil, then planting seeds - sugar peas, spring onions and carrots. They also planted runner beans into small pots which have been in the greenhouse.
It probably goes without saying that weeding, watering and mowing have been high on the list of jobs for our volunteers. Other jobs, in no particular order, undertaken in the last two weeks include:
Lasly for this update, we are delighted to annouce that we have a new resident in the garden. A hedgehog called Privkly was discovered in a nearby garden. The homeour owner decded that their garden wasn't really suitable so brought it to us. Here's a pic of Prickly snuggled up in his/her new abode in the Community Garden. A larger version of this photo is on our Flickr account, just click on "May 2026" above to be taken to all of May's photos.
Another busy month for our volunteers, including our Duke of Edinburgh Award volunteer, Jordan. It will come as no surprise that there was much weeding and mowing of grass. Less strenuous were the visits by Year 3 pupils from St Andrew's CoE Primary School; the Chinnor Open Gardens team; and members of the Red Kite Centre. It was lovely to see you all! In addition, April marked the restart of the Little Greens Garden Club. In their first session they worked with tools (after a health and safety warning!) and planted sunflower seeds. For that first session we had 10 members including some new faces - WELCOME!
But the garden is more than just weeding and mowing, there are also crops to be grown. This month we planted sweetcorn, peppers and cucumber seeds in the greenhouse as well as carrots, lettuce and kale in the raised beds. Mind you, it's not all glamorous work in the garden. The compost needed turning from one bin to another, having first emptied the contents of that bin onto the beds, which can be quite hard work.
Finally(?) we added more "Hedgehog Highways" with thanks to our neighbours.
And while on the topic of wildlife, it was great to see some newts in the pond. And an Orange Tipped butterfly came to investigate the greenhouse while a couple of Blue butterflies rested on some leaves.
March has been a busy month. But let me start with a big thank you to our wonderful friend Terry who has made these two signs for our bug hotel and our bug B&B - BRILLIANT!
Spring brings the warmer weather and our volunteers have been busy preparing the garden for reopening to visitors. That inevitably meant lots of weeding and cutting the grass. But the daffodils were flowering as was the lovely forsythia - always helps with the energy levels. The green manure has been cut back as well as the sedum and lavender. And we have made a start on the no dig bed which we have extended this year. And just to reiterate, there was lots of weeding to be done, including the strawberry bed. We also refreshed the beds with compost, emptying one of our large compost bins in the process. The greenhouse received some attention and its contents were sorted out. Finally, we planted two rowans. Here are a few pics, as always more on our Flickr accouont. Just click the month above.
First my apologies typed on 4th March. I went most of January and all of February without updating this page. My only excuse is that, to quote writer Allen Saunders from January 1957:
"Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans." - A line borrowed by John Lennon in 1980.
So, what happened in the garden in February?
We supported a couple of our apple trees with poles, bought some wildflower seedballs and welcomed our new Duke of Edinburgh student Jordan.
We transferred the raspberries into our fruit cage, cut back the rosa rogusa, cleared a side bed and tidied up greenhouse. We also sorted out the shed
weeded broad beans bed & planted aguadulce broad beans in same bed; cut down more Rosa Rogasa & weeded a daffodil bed.
The end of the month saw the daffodils planted by the Little Greens Garden Club start coming up. Our volunteers were also busy (weather permitting) in more tidying and pruning.
A cold and wet start to the year. But the garden has some colour, maybe Spring is on its way 🤞
