Our Saturday morning gardening club has been busy over the last two Saturdays cleaning and planting in Whitfield Gardens.

Our main aim has been to plant native shrubs and wildflowers but we’ve also added a few cheap and cheerful plants to give the gardens a bit of instant colour.

We’ve added ten different types of scented native wildflower “plugs”: tansy (Tanacetum vulgare), evening primrose (Oenothera biennis), sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata), lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis), English bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta), lady’s bedstraw (Galium verum), meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), lawn camomile (Anthemis nobilis), and anise hyssop (Agastache anethiodora).

These smell nice, give an attractive display when they bloom, and also boost the biodiversity of the garden.

On some sunny corners we’ve planted some viola and marigold. We’ve no idea what species or sub-species these are but they brighten up the gardens. They are pretty close to some well-trodden patches so we’ll see how long they’ll survive. Whitfield Gardens gets thousands of people passing through every day as it is very near Goodge Street tube station and next to a bus stop.