Glasgow Guerrilla Gardening

After a long weather imposed break, we’ll be making a start on work for 2012. Despite the lack of gardening activity we’ve made good progress towards getting constituted with sufficient volunteers having at last made themselves known to allow us to meet the legal requirments for constitution.

As ever we’re always on the look out for new volunteers to help with gardening, litter picking, maintaining the website or committee/fundraising work. So please get in touch if you feel you have something to offer.

Our first dig of 2012 will be on Saturday 4th Feb at Townhead in Glasgow. There has been considerable storm damage at the site with a few trees being lost so any help at all you can offer would be appreciated. We’ll be meeting at Townhead outside St Mungos Primary on the lane that connects Stirling Rd to Parson St at 11:30am and expect to be there for about two hours.

Thanks to Hayes Garden world for their support. Hayes Garden World are a huge garden centre in Ambleside – their website sells garden benches, Barbeques, chimineas, teak garden furniture and even some dining room furniture.

Please take the time to visit our sponsor as their kind support enables us to achieve a great deal as a group.

Owing to the weather this morning’s planned dig will not be going ahead.

We’ll next be meeting on 12th March 2011 at our Townhead site to carry on tidying up the winter debris, planting and litter picking.

If you’d like to help out, bring yourself a pair of gloves and a small trowel or fork if you intend to be doing any planting.

We meet outside the side entrance of St Mungo’s Primary on the lane that connects Stirling Rd and Parson Street. As ever everyone is welcome to come along.

The next dig will be on February 12th at 11:30am at Townhead. We’ll be concentrating on tidying up the site by removing litter and leaves. We’ll also be doing a spot of planting, if you’d like to plant something, please bring primroses or hellebores. Other than that, bring yourselves a pair of gardening gloves and a small trowel or fork.

Thanks to all who made it along today, your help and support is very much appreciated. Hope to see you all again soon.

Hello, I’ve taken the desicion to cancel this due to the prevailing climatic conditions. I’venot been able to get in touch with the others but I think they would agree. We will rearrange for later.

Apologies for the late notice.

regards,

Michael

Our next dig will be the last of 2010 and there is still masses of work to be done. We really need a good turnout to get the site ready for the new year. If you’ve never been before you’d be very welcome to come along and help out. Our Townhead site is opposite the Royal Infirmary, just outside St Mungos Primary on the lane that connects Stirling Rd to Parson Street more details here. We’ll be meeting at the Townhead site at 11:30am on Saturday 4th December and hope to see you all before the New Year.

All you need to bring are gloves, a trowel or bulb planter and bulbs if you have any you’d like to plant.

Hello All,

We shall be at our Townhead site this Saturday 11:30 am; for a general tidy up and weed. There is loads to do so any help you can offer will be appreciated. Depending on numbers we may also be planting some more spring bulbs. If you’d like to contribute some bulbs we are looking for native bluebells, winter aconites, snakeshead fritillaries, anemone blanda white splendour, wood anemone, daffodils, tulips, ramsons, crocuses, snowdrops and grape hyacinths. You can also donate cash on the day or via paypal – link on the side of the page.

Map Link

Cheers,

Hi All,

Townhead site: 6:30 pm - Thursday 24th June

Map link: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=parson+street+glasgow&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=51.621706,79.804688&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Parson+St,+Glasgow,+Lanarkshire+G4,+United+Kingdom&ll=55.864764,-4.237633&spn=0.002255,0.004871&t=h&z=18

The majority of the bulbs that were in bloom a few weeks ago have now finished flowering and the Townhead site needs a wee bit of a clear up and some new plants planted in. There will be some weeding needing done as well. If you want to bring a plant along we’re after Columbines, Oriental Poppies, Hostas, Foxgloves, Hollyhocks, Mexican Fleabane, Sweet Woodruff, Ferns, Solomons Seal, Scabious or Campanula or see ‘What to Bring’ here. I’ve noticed in my local B+Q that they may not have all these plants but please bring along what you can.

I’d defiantly suggest bring gardening gloves, a bin bag (for any rubbish) and maybe a bottle of water as the site is a bit dry (this will now mean that between then and now it will rain, but please bring along some water).

I hope to see some of you along in Thursday evening,

Thanks,

Michael

Hello All,

Two pieces of news, first up we were both surprised and delighted to be placed first in the 2010 Green List

especially as the other nominees were so impressive. Read more about our unexpected triumph here. Oh and if

it was you who nominated us, can you make yourself know so that we can buy you a pint.

The next piece of news concerns the site at Townhead. Unfortunately the weeds are rapidly gaining the upper hand.

To combat this we will be meeting up on Thursday 27th May at 6:30pm for a quick weed and water of the site.

Everyone is welcome, just bring yourselves, gloves and some water. The dig shouldn’t take longer than an hour and the

more who come along the quicker we’ll get the site looking it’s best.

Hope to see you all on Thursday.

A big thanks to everyone who turned out at the weekend to get the rest of the bulbs planted. The site is looking great just now and hopefully everyone’s continued hard work in 2010 will keep the site colourful all through summer and into autumn.

In addition to bulbs we also added Brook Thistle, Anemones, French Marigolds, Garden Pinks and a very generously donated conifer. The conifer wasn’t our only donation, a passer by impressed with the job that we’ve done over the last couple years on the site stopped to hand over a fiver which was used to purchase the Garden Pinks.

We next meet at Townhead on Saturday 24th April at 11:30am. There’s lots to do with plenty weeds and litter needing removed from the site. We will also be starting to plant out seeds -if you’d like to bring some seeds along we’re looking for poppies, nasturtiums, nigella and dwarf sunflowers. If you are bringing seeds you must also bring some water along to water them in with otherwise it’s highly unlikely they’ll germinate. As I do not drive I have to carry everything along to the site and cannot carry enough water for everyone so if everyone can bring along some water hopefully we’ll have enough for our seeds.

If you’d prefer to bring a plant we’re looking for Campanula, ferns (ideally Soft Shield Ferns or Common Polypody), Aquilegias (Columbines), Oriental Poppies, Foxgloves, Mexican Fleabane and Sweet Woodruff. Please note the links above are just for information for anyone unfamiliar with the above plants -I’m not suggesting you use these suppliers -though they are very good, if pricey. You should also be able to find most, if not all of the above plants and seeds from big DIY stores, garden centres, supermarkets, poundshops and the like.

I’ve been up at the site several times over the Easter weekend and have been very pleased to see that our hard work over winter is paying off with a fine display of daffodils and plenty other green shoots popping up meaning a lot of the site will be in bloom for the next couple of months. I have added 40 Alchemilla Mollis, 15 Foxgloves and 3 Columbines to the already colourful display and hope to have some Anemones, Burnet, Brook Thistle, Ox Eye Daisy, Echinacea, Musk Mallow, Wild Strawberry, Bee Balm and Red Valerian arriving later on in the week.

With that in mind it’s time to turn our attention to filling the gaps that will open up once the late winter/spring blooms have faded. We still have a couple of hundred monbretia bulbs which need planted before the end of April so any help at all with planting these would be greatly appreciated -we had hoped to get about 1000 of these planted this year, however there isn’t the time or the money to do so now but I’m sure the 250 added to the site will make for a fine display.

For those of you who are heartily sick of bulbs, you’ll be relieved to hear that once the monbretia go in we won’t be planting any other bulbs until August this year and will instead be focusing our energies on plants and seeds between now and August.

Seed wise we’re after Nasturtium and Dwarf Sunflower seeds as these both did well on the site last year-the various poundshops and supermarkets have lots of these seeds in stock quite cheaply if you fancy bring a packet along. With regard to plants the full list for Townhead can be seen here.

If that list offer to much choice to be going on with, you might want to focus your attention on perennials -ideally perennials that self seed/spread as these are the best way to make a big and lasting impact on the site without breaking the bank. Aquilegias (Columbines), Foxgloves, Sweet Woodruff, Oriental Poppies and Campanula are all fairly easy to lay hands on and would help us cover a lot of ground fairly quickly. So if you can help out by donating one or more of these plants it would be very much appreciated. Failing that a donation to the plant fund never goes wrong.

We next meet up on Saturday 10th April at 11:30am at Townhead, hope to see you all there.