Gardening on the Brandon Estate

The Brandon estate has an active gardening group that has been running since 2017. We are a collective of estate residents who have actively decided to help keep the planting on the Brandon looking good. This involves planting and maintaining the plants, shrubs, and herbs that are growing in the raised bed planters on the estate, as well as maintaining some organic food growing plots. We generally meet up weekly (typically over the weekend) during the growing season (April – October) and coordinate our activities via a Gardening WhatsApp group. We are also part of the Walworth Community Garden Network (CGN) and are working with other community gardeners locally. As part of the Great Estates initiative, we will be involved in the new planting at the base of the tower blocks.

We will be looking to hold some ‘Gardening Open Days’ in the spring of 2021 to introduce residents to the various gardening initiatives on the estate, and also to welcome new members. Residents can get involved on an ad-hoc basis, helping out with planting, watering, and weeding, or get more involved and apply for food growing plots, subject to availability. However we need to wait until Covid regulations allow before we can set these dates.

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In Autumn 2017 Southwark council awarded the estate a grant to have a landscape gardener design a planting scheme, and the plants were put in place in late 2017. A group of residents decided to get involved with helping with the planting, and have taken on the responsibility of watering, weeding, and maintaining the plants.

In the planters at the base of Cruden House, we currently have a variety of herbs, sage, rosemary, bay leaves, thyme, lemon thyme, and also some edible vegetables, tomatoes, chilli peppers, courgettes, sweet peas, and sweetcorn growing. The intention is that these be available to residents and members of the gardening group.

We have access to water and hosepipes at the base of Cornish, Cruden and Brawne houses, and in this hot weather we really need to water the planters about twice a week. It is actually quite therapeutic, and in the sunny weather quite a nice way to relax and de-stress, after a long day at work.

To give us feedback or get in touch please use our Contact Form

The gardening group meets most weekends during the growing season (April – October) and we coordinate our activities in a WhatsApp gardening group, Drop us a message using the contact form, if you would like to get involved. We aim to hold a minimum of two open days per year, where we will welcome new residents, and run an induction for new gardeners.

Photo Credit: Loz Pycock – Flickr: Henry Moore’s ‘Two Piece Reclining Figure No 3’, Brandon Estate