Unloved park in Reading

[diasthema]

There is a small kiddies play park off the Tilehurst road that is in terrible shape.  The only care it's given is the grass is mowed around the play equipment.

Essentially the park is bowl shaped.  The play bit is in the bottom of the bowl with a bit of grass round it.  The sides are planted in ivy.  The rim of the bowl has an asphalt walking path around it with some long-neglected, dead beds of something or other next to the fences.  One side of the path is blocked because the weight of vines has broken the rotten wooden fence that they were growing on;  you'd have to get on hands and knees to get past as the lot has fallen to chest level.

There probably isn't much light after dark; notice on the park gate says it will be closed at dusk every day but in fact I have never seen it closed.

I would love to do something with this, but I can't tell which things are weeds and which things might be real plants that will eventually look nice. 

I will post some photos later this week and ask for advice on what's a weed and what isn't!

[diasthema]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bookseller/sets/72157600733589439/ is a link to the full set.  It's all really dreadful and I hope you can see why I am hoping to get a posse to help!

I have no idea where to start.  Can anyone advise?  Would pruning the hedge help, and if so, where are pruning guides online so I don't overdo it?

[The Garden Monkey]

Hi

It seems that quite a few people have looked at your plea, but no-one's answered. So I hope this helps.

I'm not sure which hedge you are referring to. One of the pics has some young sycamore trees growing through some hawthorn, so get rid of them for a start.  Hawthorn will take some fierce pruning, but is quite fierce itself - and so the prunings are difficult to get rid of without a shredder or bonfire. There's also some holly in some of the pics and the same applies re prunings

In another picture [the one after the bumble bee] there is what appears to be a hydrangea. There is also what looks like ground elder underneath and an ash sapling - get the ash and any others out also.

I'll try and study the pics a bit closer and see what else I can come up with.

Can you let me have the address of the park so I can get a better idea of its layout using google earth.

best wishes

The Garden Monkey

[diasthema]

I'll try and study the pics a bit closer and see what else I can come up with.

Can you let me have the address of the park so I can get a better idea of its layout using google earth.

best wishes

The Garden Monkey

Thanks for your help!

http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=51.452162&lon=-0.986216&z=16&l=0&m=a&v=2

Here is the place on Wikimapia. 

[The Garden Monkey]

Wow that was a shock - I knew that quite well some years ago and didn't know that was there. I'm a bit stunned.

I am coming to Reading soon & will try and wander up there and take a look 1st hand.

[The Garden Monkey]

Hi

I managed to pop along to the park today, as I was going to visit the RISC roof garden which was open under the NGS.

I thought the shape of the place gave it huge potential to be a really nice oasis in an urban area.

Although, horticulturally the place was a wreck - there was a surprising number of good shrubs on site.

Will write a fuller review etc as soon as I can.

The Garden Monkey

[The Garden Monkey]

My visit was a short one and so I didn?t take comprehensive notes, but here is an outline of what I saw. I wasn?t expecting  to see much in the way of plants, but as you will see from the following there?s quite a few shrubs in there.

The hedge around the rim of the bowl is hawthorn - it has some self-sown trees starting to poke through it - the usual suspects - ash & sycamore - but also more unusually I saw at least one hazel poking through.. The bottom of the hedge is thick with ivy, which may not all be the wild kind as some of it was quite deeply lobed.

Personally I wouldn?t touch this hedge for a number of reasons.

It would be too onerous [because of its size and prickly nature] plus the council seem to be keeping it in check.

Plus it is an excellent wildlife habitat and has great flowers.

I also suspect that it acts to stop more chavvy forms of wildlife going mental in the area.

The play bowl area was simply grassed and there was no planting that I could see in there.

Along the front wall there are a couple of Hebes, a Fuchsia, a Vinca and maybe a Spirea.

This bed is quite narrow and the plants that are in there aren?t doing very well. The soil does look poor, but I suspect the the plants are mainly doing badly because it is narrow, right against a wall and also along the area where presumably people walk most often.

That being said the soil looks poor throughout the place - it has probably not been improved for ages and there are lots of big old trees around pulling out moisture and nutrients.

From the front wall heading north, up the east side is probably the best bit. It contains, Escallonia, Privet, Euonymus [probably ?Emerald?n?Green], Cornus alba ?Elegantissima? , Potentilla fruticosa and a walnut tree.

There are then a couple of concrete plinths that must have been the sites of benches, or even small wooden shelters in days gone by.

Then Cotoneaster, Prunus laurocerasus (Cherry Laurel) and Garrya elliptica (Silk tassel bush - v. nice).

In the south east corner is a bed, which has some weedy bits of ivy etc. and is quite crappy, but has potential. The fact that it isn?t full of weeds is a pointer that it might be a bit ?difficult? however. It contains a small buddleia which has a nice dark flower colour and is to my mind likely to have been planted rather than self- seeded because of this.
There is very little along the back [north] wall, probably because it is quite dark and overhung with ivy [esp. in middle]. The bed is also quite narrow like the front wall. It contains a Pyracantha, a lacecap Hydrangea [in one of yr photos] and a Japanese anemone.

At the end there is also a shrub with very big leaves. [there?s another somewhere, but I can?t remember where]. I was a bit thrown by this at first, but after a little thought, I think they are walnut trees. Or rather walnut trees that have been cut down for some reason and are sprouting from the base. They have effectively been coppiced and are hence producing large clumps of large-leaved foliage from ground level.

Doing this to trees is an ornamental horticultural practice designed to get lots of impressive foliage and trees like Catalpa bignoniodes &  Paulownia tomentosa, are normally used. I have no doubt here that the effect was achieved by accident.
 
There is another corner bed, just as in the SE corner.

Down the west side are Pyracantha, Viburnum rhytidophyllum [big dark green, long leathery leaves], an Eleagnus and then there is the fallen fence and there is no more border after that.

The wall on the west side is actually quite interesting - it  has some ferns growing in it including Asplenium and yellow flowers of Corydalis lutea.

There is then a very dark bed under some trees and a L-shaped bench in the South west corner. This bed is too overshadowed by trees to offer much potential, with removing some of the lower branches of the trees.

There?s certainly scope for some guerrilla gardening in the park . My personal suggestion would be to avoid the front and concentrate on doing something with the far corners.

Hope this helps.

[diasthema]

OK so it sounds like I should try to stick to the back corners, enrich the soil and then plant something. 

What would be a good thing to plant in November in a shady area, once I have dug round and stuck some compost in?  Would spring bulbs such as snowdrops and bluebells be ok, or is it too late?  I have to explore the wonders of the 99p store

[The Garden Monkey]

Spring bulbs are an excellent idea for shady spots. They flower early, before many trees their have leaves on, and so there isn't so much shade at that time of year. I don't think that you're too late to plant them, as it's quite mild, but I wouldn't leave it much longer.

Snowdrops are a good idea, but the ones you get in packets are all dried out and never grow. Unlike most bulbs, Snowdrops are transplanted straight away after flowering with the leaves still on (it's called planting "in the green").
Bluebells are also a good idea, but again a bit problematic. You should only plant English ones and not the Spanish ones as the two hybridise and some experts say the English ones are dying out as a result. Plus I understand that the Spanish ones often come from unrenewable sites (i.e. nicked from the wild). I'd bet that any bluebells in the Pound shop were Spanish.
You could try Grape hyacinths (Muscari), but they?ll be there for ever (for this reason I'd never plant them at home, unless in pots, but on a neglected site does that matter?)
The allium (ornamental onion) family are all fairly robust, so they might be worth a go. It really does depend what the Pound shop have in. Woolworths and supermarkets can also be a source of sometimes surprisingly cheap bulbs.
If you want to locate your source of supply and see what they've got, then feel free to email me and I could offer some more advice.

I'd also be inclined to throw around a packet of something like Nigella (Love in a Mist) for later in the year which would also indicate if the soil is really poor. If it won't grow Nigella then it is bad.

Improving the soil is always, always, always, a good idea, but not so essential for spring flowering bulbs, as they often grow under trees where the soil is not so good as the nutrients are taken by the trees.