Lunar New Year (Chinese New Year) and the Horsetail

This Lunar New Year was celebrated in the garden and we look forward to the Year of the Fire Horse where the energetic ways of the horse combine with the passionate intensity of fire.

Here's our blog from 2015 which was, for us, the "Year of the Horsetail", but we thought it was also the Year of the Horse. Wrong, that was 2014. 

Empty Common Community Garden & Meeting Hut: 2015 is the 'year of the Horse'

Horsetail is no longer a problem, still around and not overtaking everything. Perfect! 

Without the horsetail, we would never have got this land for a community garden. 

Without the horsetail I would never have looked online and found how joyous their spores are.

The walk and jump of horsetail spores (Equisetum) [Better sound] - YouTube

Without the horsetail Chinese New Year would not be celebrated in our beautiful Empty Common Community Garden.

- Charlotte

Midwinter in the Garden

 The Saplings group continue to have a wonderful time at ECCG through the midwinter. They write:

We had a really lovely session last Saturday, being at the ECCG felt exactly right for us. Most importantly, the children absolutely loved being there and enjoyed the simple activities, even though they have joined us before. The photo below showed how much the kids loved even the simple Poohsticks game next to ECCG :)!

 We love having you at the garden, Saplings! Thanks for loving on all the plants!

In other news, ECCG featured (again!) on Cambridge Radio "Flavour" last week. We are celebrities.

The radio show caught our team at work on some careful pruning and coppicing. Listen to the latest feature here, and the segment on ECCG starts at 28:10.

Our previous outing on the show is here.

Here's Flavour's Matt interviewing our Charlotte. 

Fractals are Fun

Fantastic Jack Frost play on my windows this morning. Magically, he’d been growing ice crystal gardens as I slept.

Nature, so complex, is also repetitive with much being mathematically based on fractals, a pattern which repeats itself at different scales. Fractals are an efficient way of filling space. Allowing light to enter as a tree does, blood reach extremities as our vascular system does, or for growing larger like a fern frond unfurling or a young snail growing up. Fractals are fun.

PS. We used to have a book titled "Physics is Fun" which we kept on the bookshelf only for its ludicrous, smile inducing, title alone. Perhaps if we'd opened it we might have discovered something fun on fractals.

- Charlotte