Even socialising spaces can share gardens too!

It's not just suburban gardens and small city spaces that can share gardens.

Hello there from the 10th floor of an NCP carpark!  We've joined forces with Lend and Tend’s coolest new garden Lender, who are Lending a car-park Rooftop Garden-come-cinema to be Tended. 

Did you know, well as getting private gardens Patch Matched, Lend & Tend is can also help make urban sharable spaces more accessible, too. If you run a community garden or have an urban space that can be shared, let us know!

So, how has your garden been growing?

Our unpredictable weather worried me in January when our plum tree-lined streets were fully in bloom, battling against alternating balmy and blowy days in February, but whilst the weather didn’t know what to do with itself, Mother Nature did and I’m pleased to say, the local plum trees are thriving in the sunshine of our inevitable and always surprising spring. 

It’s not only Mother nature who’s been springing in to action, things are sprouting up all over the place with Lend & Tend,  new garden owners and garden Tenders are popping up, all the way down from Sheffield to Streatham and if you’ve signed up and are waiting to be Patch-Matched still, thank you for your patience. As soon as people hear about Lend & Tend both garden Lenders and Tenders are signing up and it’s only a matter of time until we can Patch-Match you all. 

Speaking of Streatham I was warmly welcomed to visit a Lender’s garden recently, you know the sort, little bit of a patch at the front and a nice little oasis through the kitchen at the rear. If you’ve always wished you had a garden, you too could be a garden Tender who could help a local garden owner and grow in a garden like this? Or maybe you’ve got a garden space like it that needs some time and love and you could Lend it?

Since I last wrote to you all I was invited to do a talk at the RSA about Lend & Tend and how it fits into the sharing marketplace; how Lend and Tend will help not only individuals with gardening but how it can help communities get together. 

Gardened gardens knit neighbourhoods!

You can find out what else happened that evening by checking out their post on Storyfy

So, how did I end up on the 10th floor of a rooftop car-park. After talking on Green Croydon a podcast presented by Andrew Dickinson a listener, hard at work building Croydon’s hippest location for the Summer; a rooftop cinema, called in and offered to Lend a simply amazing space. 

This Lender has an entire car park rooftop garden for Tenders to play on this summer. 

The Lost Format Society, is back again this Summer; like cut off shorts and perfumes that smell like lemons and sandy beaches, and they’re bringing back the open-air cinema to Croydon again. 

Last year it was brilliant! Again the films will be screened on a massive CRT themed TV screen, reminiscent of one that would’ve been seen in the arms of looters in the 2011 riots. 

However, with the return of this cinema, it’s definitely shaping up to be a different place to when it was a Croydon, maligned for its riots. This Transformation town is really transforming, what with trendy Box Park opening soon and more community activity than a petri dish; Croydon is coming good, it’s growing and the people of the town are putting their best feet forward and I’m pleased to say more importantly pulling their green fingers out and inspiring others to do so, too.

So anyone who’d like to rooftop garden on what will be an exciting community space; visitors and locals to Croydon, come and enjoy South London’s biggest rooftop garden terrace before the sun goes down and the curtains go up for movie time. 

Sunday gardening, relaxing on the terrace, sounds lovely, doesn’t it? 

Now, I’m not the only one who’s been busy on a roof; in Croydon, Mr Urban Edible Gardening, Esiah Levy has been on the rooftop of Bernard Weatherill house, been sharing his fruitful gardening wisdom. Esiah’s recently transformed Croydon council’s office roof-top into an edible garden.

Now a challenge: The Lost Format Society have offered to Lend the rooftop as a shared garden space, but there’s less than a week to get the rooftop of the old Fairfield Halls NCP carpark ready looking like it has the potential to be a beautiful and usable and most importantly of all, enjoyable garden space for people to relax in and begin growing in. 

Well it’s a good thing then, that Esiah met the challenge of creating from scratch, 24 gardens in 24 hours for a Houzz-Marks and Spencer’s collaboration. 

No whilst Esiah is planning the planting and The Lost Format folks get some planters banged together, I’m going to help source soil, but most of all I want to get the place used by gardeners and people who want to spend time outside. 

So if you’d like to Lend & Tend this summer and garden on the coolest rooftop garden in South London, please sign up to Tend on the Lend & Tend website. 

If you want to Tend to a garden anywhere else then you may be in luck as we’ve new gardens being added daily. 

If you know people who can’t garden/won’t garden or just have a garden and can’t, tell them to submit their garden to Lend & Tend and Lend it to someone to enjoy, grow pretty things or even edibles to get some garden chores done. 

Whatever you do this summer, please don’t let gardens go to waste, particularly in London where space is special. Not when there are 1000’s desperate to have allotment space or a home that has room to grow. 

Lend & Tend. Tell your friends! 

Now I’m off to read up on No, Dig gardening. You dig?! I dig. Well, I won’t be, that’s the point and you needn’t either.

Catch you soon!