The Garden At Cecil Sharp House

We need your seeds!

Give what you can to the garden at Cecil Sharp House with Transition Primrose Hill

Early last year in search of land, two gardeners from Transition Primrose Hill approached the English Folk Dance and Song Society about the possibility of growing food on some of our land in exchange for maintaining one of our beds.

Transition Primrose Hill is part of the Transition Towns movement, a fast growing international network inspiring communities to be creative in addressing the twin problems of climate change and the end of cheap oil.

This has now developed into a lovely partnership project. Transition Primrose Hill, headed up by Community Gardener, Anna Locke, are maintaining and developing the main bed in the Cecil Sharp House gardens as a medicinal specimen bed along the lines of a Monk’s Physik Garden. 

Transition Primrose Hill are also collaborating with local Herbalist Christopher Hedley, who has some medicinal plant additions associated with both healing and folk stories, and he will be delivering some popular herbal talks in the Cecil Sharp House garden about the plants later in the season. 

The garden is also used as a teaching model by the Permaculture Association where students learn from and make things for the garden and also is the site of the annual Permaculture Festival in the summer.

The Transition Primrose Hill Gardeners will also be growing some salad leaves and herbs for the Nice Green Cafe to use in its delicious organic food and also grow some showcase vegetables for people to see.  We have already planted an apple tree, donated to the garden on the annual Apple Day event organised by EFDSS. It is our hope that the rest of the garden will be surrounded by flowers that appear in songs, poems and stories.

If you would like to be part of this project then please contact the Transition Primrose Hill Gardeners at transitionprimrosehill@googlemail.com and/or have a look at our wish list to see what you can donate from your own garden.

OR if you know a plant that appears in a song, why not donate it to the EFDSS and the Transition Primrose Hill Gardeners will plant it for you...

We would also like to thank Organic Roofs Ltd for their time, support and materials that were used to create a beautiful green roof outdoor shelter and a green roofed garden shed in the garden at Cecil Sharp House. We would also like to thank Lindum Green Roof for the wildflowers and sedum turf that were kindly donated for the outdoor shelter.

Wish List

We would be so grateful of any donations of seeds or plants of: 

Angelica, Chamomile, Chicory, Wallflower, Columbine, Fennel, Heartsease, Hellebore, Pennyroyal, Valerian, Tansy, Wild Carrot, Sweet Violet, Madonna Lilly, Vervain, Chasteberry, Sage, Pink Yarrow, Nicotinia