Quaker Gardens is an old Quaker burial ground owned by the Society of Friends where George Fox, one of the early founders of the Society of Friends, and about 20,000 other Friends are buried. In the manner of Friends there have never been gravestones. It is managed jointly by a local Friends group and Islington Borough Council. A children’s playground is part of the park. It is a hidden gem of a garden, complementing the far better known Bunhill Fields Dissenters’ burial ground nearby.
Quaker rose in full bloom in the gardens.
Recent visitors in Quaker Gardens.
We aim to make the garden biodiverse and nature friendly. As we have several mature London Plane trees planted about 1880, the garden is mostly a “woodland edge” garden, with a smaller area getting full sun for part of the day. Over the years we have experimented with what we can grow successfully in spite of the dry shade and find that a surprisingly large variety of plants can thrive. The best time is spring when violets, hyacinths, daffodils, bluebells, snowdrops, periwinkle, epimediums, fatsia japonica, hellebores, euphorbias, ceanothus, for get me nots, forsythia, and Rosa odorata 'Bengal Crimson' (which continuously flowers all year with its vibrant crimson blooms) are in bloom.
A feature of the garden is the variety of trees and shrubby trees, including cherries, apple, pear, almond, sea buckthorn, field maple, London Plane, Silver birch, hazels, elderberry, rowan, pyracantha, cotoneaster, myrtle, lilac, bay, olive, fuchsia, lemon verbena, abelia, and chimonanthus praecox. The hedges are beech, hawthorn, honeysuckle, wiegela, and bamboo. Climbers include golden and wild hop, Virginia creeper, ivy, old man’s beard, and grape vine.
The herbs include nettles, sage, rosemary and lavender. All the grass areas are now wildflower meadows – a project in progress.
We maintain a large compost heap both to use prunings and weedings and when composted to enrich the soil for plants that need it.
Animals we have found in the garden include many birds, fox, squirrels, a frog and bats at night. Seasonally insects are attracted including butterflies, moths and bees. There is a bird bath.
Plants are left in the garden as gifts, often having outgrown their pots, and we plant them hopefully in suitable spots. Usually we don’t know what they are – this year a small pear? and a Camelia? arrived. Conversely we have found that bought plants in pots can get stolen when planted. We find that bare root plants, seedlings, and seeds are far less stolen. Friends donate seedlings and plants, which has increased the variety and introduced us to plants we are not familiar with.
Many and diverse people have over the years enjoyed Quaker Gardens. Children are particularly busy in the garden. When we tend the garden we talk to pilgrims and visitors and it is always interesting to hear what they say and about their connection with the burial ground. Many Americans come whose ancestors were buried in the garden. People say that they enjoy its sense of peace, biodiversity, wildness, and the large variety of plants.
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