Thursday 26th April - Trip to Thrive Gardens in Battersea Park

Unfortunately rain stopped our plans up at the allotment this Thursday - we had hoped to continue our planting of bare rooted strawberry plants and various seeds, but the constant showers put our original plans back a week as we still have no shelter up at the plot yet.

Instead, the idea to pop to Battersea Park to see the Thrive gardens was suggested, and we agreed that rather than sit in a shed, we could go and see what was growing at Thrive.

Arriving at Thrive Herb Garden in Battersea - umbrella's  prepared for the next downpour...

Thrive are a small national charity who work with people with various disabilities and impairments and provide support to help them experience and learn about gardening. The link to their website is here: Thrive

We took the train from Herne Hill station to Battersea Park and walked to the Thrive garden - it was being re-developed, so there wasn't a lot there, the man in charge explaining that there is a herb garden run by Thrive in another part of the park. After sheltering from a particularly heavy rain shower we made it to the Thrive herb garden and the sun came out!

We had a look around, and learnt what some of the plants look like from the top (potato plants have green leafs above the soil - the potatoes grow below it - see picture below)

Potato plant - the green leaves grow above the soil - the potatoes below it - from http://muffintop.wordpress.com/category/shopping/

We also looked in the greenhouse at some of the plants which had just started to grow (or germinate) from seeds and are known as seedlings - they all look very similar at first, but on closer look, some were quite different, like the cucumber seedling.

Seedlings in the greenhouse at Thrive

We then explored the gardens some more, taking some photographs to record what we saw as you can see below;

Some onions

The centre of the Herb Garden, Thrive in Battersea

Broad Beans

Netting protecting Pea Plants from pests like birds and slugs

The tops of the Potato Plant!

Chard - it comes with various coloured stalks like above, red and orange

About to leave the Thrive Herb Garden and travel back home

All in all a trip in which we got to see how another project works, the kind of plants we may grow, and hopefully we will be inspired with some idea's for our own project!