Amanda Wayne on how her group of volunteers have helped revive the community garden at Bush Hill Park Station

Volunteers get to work on the platform at Bush Hill Park Station

Over the last five years, a group of keen locals have been quietly nurturing the garden at Bush Hill Park Station, bringing the platform into bloom.

Long-standing Enfielders will fondly remember Bush Hill Park Station for its flower displays, but green-fingered efforts sadly declined over the years. Fortunately, Bush Hill Park (BHP) Station Community Garden is now an active local group with renewed interest and ambitions for the station.

By reviving overgrown areas and unused patches, the platform is now thriving with pollinators and diverse plants.

BHP Station Community Garden is formed by a handful local residents and we are generously supported by Energy Garden – an initiative to improve biodiversity around existing London transport infrastructure, funded by the sale of community-owned renewable energy. As volunteers we now come together weekly to tend to the platform garden, doing tasks like watering, weeding, pruning and sowing.

In 2018, Energy Garden donated colourful timber planters for the northbound platform, now nurtured by residents. Since 2021 the focus has been on landscaping the disused grass banks on the southbound platform and, this year, the garden put on its brightest display.

As you stroll along the platform you’ll spot the gravel garden, complete with apple trees, honeysuckle and geraniums, framed by willow fencing. The thriving British wildflower meadow is filled with daisies, campions and poppies, bees and butterflies all summer long. A little further down are the newest additions – two raised beds, built from scaffolding boards backed by hedgerows. One is filled with herbs and flowers and the other is for fruits, vegetables and sunflowers.

This year the newly-planted vegetable patch has sprouted into life, with tomatoes, courgettes, chard, French beans and carrots, grown in organic soil made by the group’s DIY composter.

It’s amazing what a difference a few dedicated pairs of hands can make. The raised beds we built are thriving and it makes us immensely proud when we see people admiring the gardens while waiting for a train.

As the abundant summer growth slows, we are are planning ways to pickle and preserve vegetables grown in the garden and exciting plans are being hatched to build a bug hotel.

Bush Hill Park Station Community Garden meets weekly and always welcomes volunteers. Get in touch for more information:
Visit facebook.com/BHP.station.community.garden

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