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:
2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 and prior
The last two weeks of October were as busy as always, lots of basic maintenance at this time of year: obviously there was plenty of weeding; lots of planting green manure;
cutting back the willow and bushes at the rear of the pond;
pulling the tomatoes from one of the raised beds and refilling it with compost; clearing the cougettes and nasturtiums; work on the edging; mending and painting the wooden petals for the raised beds.
Looking forward to next year we also planted strawberries (roll on summer!). lettuce and garlic.
Finally we held our annual pumkin carving afternoon and, despite the weather, a splendid time was had by all. For those that are interested,
the weight of the pumpkin grown by our Little Greens was 3.989kg.
We also had some talented pumkin carvers ...
18th October saw the last Little Greens Garden Club before its winter break. The previous week they learned how they can help wildlife in the garden to survive,
they built a wood pile and made bird feeders. They also turned over the two tubs with potatoes and took them home to cook.
How on earth is it October already? I seem to have lost most of September - my apologies.
The month started off with a visit by Year 3 pupils from St Andrew's CE Primary School. They picked a good day as it was a glorious afternoon with lovely weather. The children were able to harvest sunflower seeds from the sunflowers, make bird feeders to take back to their school garden, and learn about biodiversity in the garden.
Despite the onset of autumn our Little Greens Garden Club continues to thrive and is enjoyed by all its members. The first Saturday of the month saw them
looking at the hedgehog homes in the garden and providing food for them. They also did some digging and cutting back.
As you (hopefully) will have seen we have a family open afternoon later this month when visitors can take part in pumpkin carving. Here are a few pumpkins just waiting to be carved
The first week of September has seen our volunteers clearing a couple of areas. One has been sown with grass seeds, the other with wildflowers.
And as always there are weeds to be removed, this week we concentrated on the area behind the fruit cage. Other tasks completed included tidying the sunflowers and the inevitable mowing the grass.
Finally, as you might have seen on our home page, we continued to harvest produce.
The rest of August was mostly spent watering, cutting the grass, and general maintenance. We've also been harvesting, as always watch out for
produce to be taken.
We rounded off the first half with a "Fun In The Afternoon" event that was well attended, despite the hot weather. Thank you to all of our visitors,
to Linda and Selina from Chinnor Library for reading to the children (and their parents), and our volunteers.
The children also had lots of fun (obviously as there was a clue in the event name 😁) making butterflies, boats, fishes and musical instruments. They also took part in a treasure hunt.
The aforementioned bug hotel is now finished and mounted on the back fence.
And a quick photo of one our volunteers giving our hedge a haircut with the trimmer we purchased with the grant from Chinnor Open Gardens.
Much maintenance, especially watering, keeps our volunteers busy. And talking of busy, our Little Greens Garden Club members have also been
kept busy:
We were also delighted to welcome the Friends Of Chinnor Library to the garden. They read several stories to our Little Greens. Everybody had a lovely time and the feedback from the Friends was:
"Our two Storytellers read three books, all based on vegetables and gardening and the children all seemed to enjoy it, calling out which different vegetables etc,
they recognised and some that they had planted in the Community Garden themselves. There was a lot of chat amongst the children and the readers about the stories and pictures in the books and the time flew by."
We also welcomed the Beavers back for a return visit and they learnt how to use garden implements such as forks, spades, rakes, etc. It was
great to see them using this knowledge in the garden. They also made some mini bug hotels to install into a larger bug hotel which will be placed on one of the fences in the garden.
The first week of July has been extremely busy with lots of activities and visits. We welcomed the Brownies, Girl Guides and the Red Kite Family Centre.
Everyone enjoyed the various activities we had planned for their visits as well as enjoying the fresh fruit and vegetables. It is very rewarding to read their comments on the feedback board.
It is lovely to see the butterflies on the buddleia trees and the insects enjoying the pond especially the dragonflies.
Thanks to Chinnor Parish Council for laying the new path into the garden; making pedestrian access much safer.
We had a lovely visit by the Rainbows who went on a treasure hunt around the garden, made gardens with playdough with all the treasure they found and planted wildflowers to take home.
We also had fun erecting a new fruit cage (sorry birds!)
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The garden is positively bursting with colour at the moment, so feel free to pop in on weekend afternoons to see for yourselves.
It was good to see those of you who joined the BBOWT walk around the garden,
before heading off to St Andrew's Churchyard and then finally to the Donkey Lane Orchard.
Our Little Greens Garden Club is going from strength to strength and is now at capacity. It is wonderful to see the children so involved in, and thoroughly enjoying, all the activities.
And obviously the club wouldn't be such a success without our brilliant volunteers!
The Little Green Garden Club had their second session, this time with 14 members.
they have been very busy learning how to work with big tools safely as well as weeding and planting sunflower seeds. This coming Saturday they will be planting out runner beans.
We held a Plant and Seed Swap at the beginning of the month and saw a steady stream of visitors. Thank you all for coming. And planting continues with some cell grown peas and French beans.
Apologies, it's now May and I hadn't updated fhe website for April! So here is a quick overview of what we did:
It will probably come as no surprise that a lot of mowing, watering, weeding and edging happened during the month. We also did a lot of planting incuding carrots, beetroot, peas, mange tout, parsnips, onions, and potatoes.
Makes me hungry just typing that!
The pond, already looking good, has had a natural fence erected
We prepared an area for the Little Greens Garden Club and also for wildflowers
Some repairs were made to the petals and the trip hazards were painted
We also had lots of visitors for the Easter Trail; we gave a presentation to Hempton Fields residents some of whom paid us a vist; we took delivery of the slabs for a new path at the entrance;
our greenhouse started leaking but a bit of brute force applied to a gutter fixed it.
Finally our Little Greens Garden Club restarted with a dozen eager participants.
We held our annual Mothers' Day event last Saturday (29th March) and it was lovely to welcome so many of you to the garden. We hope you all enjoyed looking around as well
as having some tea and cake. Thanks also to the volunteers on the day and to the bakers of the delicious cakes!
Prior to Saturday's event, in addition to mowing the grass and digging over a bed or two,
one of our team painted all the trip hazards in the garden. We also dug in the green manure in one of the beds (still two more to go), took some sage cuttings and tidied up one of the planters
at the front.
And today it is the vernal equinox, so from an astronomical perspective, it's spring!!!
Work has been continuing on the pond area:
We also had a delivery of 12 planters. The first six have now been constructed,with stones at the bottom & top filled with soil & manure. Five of them have been
planted up with rhubarb, sage, rosemary, chives, and oregano. The last one will have some pak choi, basil & coriander.
And, of course, there are tasks that visitors won't see, like fitting an opening window to the greenhouse and covering some shelves in preservative
Meteorological spring has sprung and a big thank you to the amazing crew from the Community Payback Scheme and our volunteers for their hard work on St David's Day.
Much digging out occured:
- a new pond
- the compost bins
- the sloe plants
Further work took place to prepare the wildflower area. The sun shone and the day was really productive. Again thanks to everyone involved.
I suppose the best thing about February is that it's almost Spring with snowdrops, crocuses peeping their heads up from the soil plus other signs of life returning.
In addition to the routine tasks in the garden we are also starting to refurbish the pond area and we've already had a couple of visitors.
Another task we are planning is one that was never on any list of things to do.
Alas, we've recently had a couple of large vehicles park on the grass at the entrance/exit which is not only potentially dangerous but is really not good for the grass nor indeed the soil. So we've decided that we need to plant hedging
along the edge and we'll take the opportunity to create a footpath into the garden at the same time.
Although it's not really the time for doing much in the garden, the plants continue to grow.
The snowdrops are starting to show and we have quite a few bulbs breaking through.
