Photos from the Kitchen Garden launch party

A blustery Saturday afternoon became a sunny one for the official opening of the ‘Yvonne Conolly Garden’, Wray Crescent’s community kitchen garden project.

What happened on the day?

We saw three speeches, a bake sale, a barbecue and a chance to do a little gardening. We enjoyed a hilarious sausage catching competition for dogs and Alan Briggs’ beautiful ‘Bug Hotel’ stall.

We are extremely grateful for the fantastic raffle put together Friends group members and neighbours, the Pretty Shiny Shop. 

As a result of everybody’s hard work – tea, cakes, barbecue and a big thanks for the raffle – we managed to raise over £200 to support the work our group is doing — which is useful as we’ll need to top up the compost!

Speeches and more

Islington Council leader and local councillor, Richard Watts kindly opened the event with a lovely speech in which he welcomed everyone, talked about his hopes for the project and introduced Yvonne Conolly, who our group decided to name the garden after in recognition of her life achievement’s in education and equality.

Yvonne also spoke at the opening, sharing beautiful, heart-warming words and sharing her wish that the garden becomes a place where all our communities get together, and that it become a place where people of all ages can learn a little about nature. Education has always been close to Yvonne’s heart.

You can see lots more images taken during the event below.

We also heard from Jonny, chair of the group. He discussed the huge voluntary effort made by all our members and support from our partners Streets Kitchen and Arts & Media School. He told us that getting the project to launch took a huge effort, totalling around 360-volunteer hours so far.

So many thanks

Jonny thanked so many people: Yvonne, Islington’s fantastic park team, Shan, Julian, Karon, Henry and Andrew; our local councillors; the Mayor’s Greener City team, Kew Gardens for seeds and every single Friend of Wray Crescent member and supporter, all of whom have made so much effort to get the project off the ground.

We were thrilled to see so many local people meeting each other, heard lots of different ideas for the future of the park and lots of people of all ages signed up to get involved in the group.

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The launch was also a fundraiser, and we’re pleased to say we raised over £200, every penny of which will go towards developing and maintaining the Yvonne Conolly Garden and to help the group in its work to make our local park a place where everyone in the local community can communicate, work together and enjoy this precious green space.

Thank you so much to everyone who worked so hard to make this happen.

As well as the huge contribution made by all the members of the Friends of Wray Crescent, the Yvonne Conolly Garden was developed with support from: The Mayor of London’s Greener City Fund and Islington Council.

We’d also like to say a special thanks to Keith Andrews for his lovely photographs taken during the event.

If you want to join our group, please sign-up using the following form.