The Gardeners Guide To Dalston

After Hackney's success in the London in Bloom Awards, residents may be looking to improve their own gardens and share tips with other green fingered enthusiasts.

Dalston People have collated a guide for gardeners in Dalston.

The Dalston Eastern Curve space launched in the Summer as a "meeting place for people and plants". The garden is open daily from 11am till dusk and it's free to have a look around. All fruit and veg grown on the site is done by Dalston residents and its a great opportunity for anyone who doesn't have their own garden to experiement in. The Eastern Curve Gardeners' Group runs on Saturdays from 2-6pm for those interested in learning about how to grow your own vegetables.

The garden also hosts a number of events, such as the upcoming Dalston Harvest Festival on Sunday 3rd October. At the event, residents are invited to bring along fruit, vegetables or herbs they have grown in Dalston and partake in a mass feast.

"The Eastern Curve Gardeners will be around to talk about growing food at the Garden, there will be tomato expertise, plant swapping and hopefully lots and lots of Dalston produce – you can’t get more local than that."

Other gardens in Hackney that you must visit are the Geffrye Museum Herb Garden, which contains over 170 different herbs and plants. You can pick small amounts and smell the wonderful aromas in the beautfiul setting of the garden right by Hoxton tube.

King Henry's Walk Garden is another new green space which is run by volunteers, with support from Islington Council, the garden contains growing plots for cultivation by local residents, where the use of organic gardening methods helps to promote a diversity of plants and wildlife.

It is located in the Mildmay ward of Islington, but sits on the border with Dalston and is created by the local community, for the local community.

Are you looking to redesign your garden? Two Dalston based landscape gardeners are Theories Landscape Ltd based near Broadway Market and also Jenny Bloom Garden Design. Landscape gardeners can help you design and develop your garden to suit your particular needs and can then construct and bring these ideas to life. They can also organise relevent equipment, as well as constructing features such as ponds or water features.

Finally, are you looking to buy plants, or gardening equipment? The North One garden centre on Englefield Road provides these items. The North One Garden Centre has recently been voted best "boutique" garden centre in the Garden Centre of the Year Awards. This is the highest accolade any Garden Centre can achieve. North One Garden Centre has also been awarded 17th place in the February 09 edition of the Independent Magazine's "50 Best Garden Centres in the Country".  They were also featured in Vogue's supplement of Best Retail Outlets, the Guardian Interiors Directory and Time Out London's 100 Best Shops.

The judges at the Garden Centre Awards noted that North One "has placed excellence of customer service, product quality and visual presentation at the centre of its ethos, backed by staff who are both passionate and knowledgeable about gardening and keen to pass this on to the firm’s customers."

Owner Beryl Henderson  says she started the garden centre 10 years ago because, as a keen gardener, she "couldn't find a garden centre I wholeheartedly enjoyed visiting."

She decided to create a business in North London, aiming to become "a centre of excellence where staff were friendly, genuinely helpful and well-informed - a place with interesting, unusual, reasonably priced plants of the highest quality and an efficient plant ordering service."

Sounds like she has done a great job!

Plenty to get stuck into as a gardener in Dalston as you can see. Let us know how it goes and Dalston People would love to see some pictures of what you grow!