The Chalk Farm LDC Garden Project

 We are now into October and the weather has been a mixed bag of sunshine and showers.  The rain has not stopped us from continuing with our restoration work on the hotel gardens.   The Secret Garden has been very tricky the past few weeks with its out of control brambles which are rather prickly!!!   Here is a photo of the secret garden - we have been clearing the area to ground level and trying to reach the very tall conifer behind.  Interestingly,  we  could see a statue lying on the floor which was buried beneath the brambles - it took all week to reach the statue and turned out to be very funny and disappointing that it didn't have a head!   So the mission was on, who was going to find the head of the statue?  Had to be here somewhere. We found the head, yay!!  Welcome fun when the brambles are very miserable and slow to get through.  Shame the statue isn't very happy.  I wonder what her story is? ...

 More work done on the allotment this week.  This picture shows lots of rubbish we needed to clear.  Old wood pallets and plant pot root balls were buried beneath this lot.  We even found a dinner fork and a pair of scissors!!  Here's the same area at the end of the week.  Never ending weeds......................  The plant root balls gave us a job to do.  We broke up the soil from around the roots and then put the compost into the first bay on the left.  We planted some daffodil bulbs  in the hotel front garden.  The end of the week finished with some welcome colour of flowers.  Sprucing up the hotel entrance and adding some hanging baskets.

 A nice tidy flower bed outside the hotel.  One of our garden students worked very hard on this.

  This week the students started work on the overgrown allotment.  The first thing we needed was a compost heap area, as already we have created lots of green waste.  Finally, by the end of week we started making progress.

Chalk Farm Hotel LDC is a training centre for adults with learning disabilities based at Chalk Farm hotel in Willingdon. Students can train and gain hospitality and horticulture experience in a realistic setting.  This year the garden students have a big project to be apart of.  They are reclaiming the overgrown gardens and land adjoining the hotel to make a new sensory garden, wildlife garden and begin an allotment within the walled gardens. Watch our journey as the big adventure begins!!!