Speed Greening: Winter Garden Day at Cordwainers Garden

Despite a few blustery showers to begin with, we were lucky with another sunny day for garden volunteering down at Cordwainers Garden. Teams of people got stuck in with various different tasks including bagging up soil, clearing and planting a new bed, cutting kindling with an axe, weeding rogue areas, collecting leaves for leafmould, patching up the shed and clearing out and re-arranging the composting corner. Fuelled by an almost continuous supply of tea from the storm-kettle (powered by wood) and a delicious spread from Cafe Morningside we got a huge amount done. We even dug up and relocated an enormous Calla Lily which had planted itself rather annoyingly in the dye bed.  It was great to have a mix of old and new faces at the garden, to share some of the heavy lifting and chat about Starwars and science fiction (!) over lunch. Thanks to all our hardworking volunteers, the garden has been given a new lease of life as it braces itself for the cold months ahead.

First volunteer of the day, a huge worm

The rains clears and the sun comes out to warm us up

Duncan gets to work on patching up the pallet shed

Emma and Shamima clearing the ground and planting up a new area in the front garden

Jane weeding and tidying the wildlife bed and Jonathan bagging up our fresh compost

Star of the day, the storm kettle

Delicious spread made by Cafe Morningside

Bags of fresh compost for each bed, Christmas has come early!

Having a break and filling up with lots of food

Lots of mmmm sounds

Cutting up dry woody thing for storm kettle kindling

Last teabreak of the day!

This Winter Garden Volunteer Day was organised by Cordwainers Grow as part of our Speed Greening project supported by Team London.

Meadow flower dyeing

After spending multiple occasions wading through the wildflowers in London Fields in the pouring rain we finally put our harvest to good use this weekend. We held a pop-up dye workshop between the park and Broadway Market catching people reveling in the glorious sunshine that Saturday brought. We showed people an ancient Japanese technique for natural dyeing called shibori where you use folding, clamping, twisting and other creative means to create a pattern. (Tie-dying is a type of shibori). We created a dye vat using the flowers from the meadow, mostly coreopsis and zinnias. 

Naturally dyed bunting

The dye vat with coreopsis and zinnia meadown flowers

Some shibori creations from the day drying in the sunshine

Bundle dyeing at the Redmond Centre

It was quite an eventful week for dyeing, that's natural dyeing with plants as opposed to the sad kind of dyeing. We held a workshop at Woodberry Down and showed residents how to use plants to dye fabric using silk swatches. One method for natural dyeing involves creating a pattern with flowers and plant materials directly onto the fabric. You then roll the fabric squares into bundles around a stick and steam them.

 Our dye class at Redmond Centre in Woodberry Down

Preparing a bundle dye with hollyhocks, onions skins and Zinnia flowers

Steaming the bundles

The finished dyed silks

Hanging our creations up to dry