lendandtend

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Here’s a sneaky preview to the new LendandTend.com website! 

Apologies if you’ve come to LendandTend.com and have found that the website’s under construction.

Please do get in touch via email lendandtend@gmail.com if you need more information, or tweet us @LendandTend and you can also find us on Instagram @LendandTend and on Facebook at, you guessed it, https://www.facebook.com/LendandTend/  

[lendandtend]

Here’s a sneaky preview to the new LendandTend.com website! 

Apologies if you’ve come to LendandTend.com and have found that the website’s under construction.

Please do get in touch via email lendandtend@gmail.com if you need more information, or tweet us @LendandTend and you can also find us on Instagram @LendandTend and on Facebook at, you guessed it, https://www.facebook.com/LendandTend/  

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Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to support Lend and Tend so far, I wholeheartedly appreciate all of the kindness and generosity I’ve received and would like to let you all know that we’re so close to launching and previewing the new website so that you can all get Lending and Tending. 

New Lend and Tend friends, I’m so exited to hear from you all and old Lend and Tend friends, really, truly, couldn’t have gotten this far without you! It’s been a real learning curve, getting this off the ground, from the roots up you could say, but once again Thank you, when I know that there must be many other causes, close to your heart. 

When up against many elements in our world; this, Lend and Tend is just my little step to be proactive, environmentally and socially conscious and I hope I can help as many people as possible who want and need it. 

I'd love to share some of the boons that Lend and Tend achieves along the way and I'd be delighted to keep you informed of moments like this; important, valued, treasured markers where I've had the support of kind and lovely people like you. Thank you. So, next stop south London domination, then the world, no not really; perhaps just the outer limits of zone 2-6 (which would be brilliant). 

So vouchsafe Lend and Tend is on it's way thanks to you. Indebted to you, my warmest wishes, Joyce.

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I recently read J.G Ballard's High Rise and thought Ned Beauman's foreword brilliantly struck a chord with Lucy Grace's, play Garden and the lead role Lucy plays (based on her own experiences of living in the city); how she behaves in the environment of her flat on the 3rd floor without a garden and it's effect on her mental health.

Ned writes, “Does the place you live really change the way you behave? A 2007 meta-study by Robert Gifford concluded that ‘children who live in high rises have, on average more behavioural problems. Residents in high-rises probably have fewer friendships in the building, and certainly help each other less’. High-Rise's protagonist, Laing muses; ‘life in the high-rise [began] to resemble the world outside…[with the] same ruthlessness and aggressions concealed within a set of polite conventions’.

Things do get a little out of hand to say the least and it’s a disturbing and thrilling fun read. I won't spoil it if you haven’t read it, but the story does have quirks that tie in with Lucy’s in Garden. High-Rise too, ‘externalises’ where ‘we wage quiet wars with fake smiles, or just repress and fantasise’.

If only there was a way that people like us; me, you and the 1000’s of others who live in London, like Lucy in Garden the play, could combat our shut off existences and deal with living in our boxy, but necessary quarters; high-rises, converted in to flats-flats, split-level maisonettes, semi-detached, often cramped and overshared existences that drive us to distraction.

Well, there’s Lend & Tend. Where willing garden owners who perhaps need some garden help, can lend their gardens to the garden-less.

So if you’ve no garden? No problem, There’s no need go home and shut the door of your flat behind you, when there is a potentially beautiful space right under your nose that could certainly use your hands and green fingers to get it in back in to shape, getting you outside in the fresh air and in a garden and possible growing healthy and delicious things to eat too, with any luck.

I hope that via the medium of gardening and garden appreciation, Lend & Tend also becomes a way of befriending people in our neighbourhoods, people like the older members of our society, who much like the man in the John Lewis Christmas ‘Man on the Moon’ ad, often live just as shut off lives as us busy younger people.

If you want to find out more about Lend & Tend email lendandtend.com

I could really do with your help and getting more responses to this surveyhttp://goo.gl/forms/PoUg60E7m9

If you want to find out more about seeing Lucy Grace's wonderful show Garden later this Spring, keep an eye on Greenwich Theatre, London page.

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2016 is a year for Sharing

Have you noticed untended gardens? When there’s potential garden space going to waste, there are many who don't have a garden to grow in and dream of gardening.

But some people can't garden, or don't have time or the means to maintain one.

Whilst waiting lists for allotments are endless, unused gardens could be used to grow in, so Lend & Tend helps the people who want to garden and it also helps the people who wished they didn't have to!

It’s often found that an unloved garden indicates that it’s owner, would not only appreciate a helping hand, but also need someone to talk to occasionally.

So you've no garden? No problem!

Lend & Tend could help your local neighbours who need a helping hand and also those who want to get their hands dirty.

Gardened gardens knit neighborhoods together, making them safer, healthier and greener for everyone.

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This is so exciting! People are into garden sharing in Croydon! 

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Supported by the Big Lottery Fund and led by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Grow Wild inspires communities, friends, neighbours and individuals across the UK to come together to transform local spaces, by sowing, growing and enjoying native wild flowers.

Here’s a nifty way to make cheap business cards, greeting cards, table decorations, invitations from nature beautifying growing paper. 

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How did you grow this Summer? Summer may be over but it’s what you do now and for the rest of the year that counts for any growing projects. 

Start with food scraps; fish bones and things like orange peel that stink out the bin! 

20 MILLION tonnes of biodegradable waste like this gets thrown into landfill each year! 

Never have a smelly bin in the house ever again and help the environment. 

Keep your carcasses and cabbage scraps for your compost bin. Worms with love you for it and so will your winter veg and spring flowers and you’ll be rewarded with amazing displays, I promise. 

Come next summer, you’ll have conditioned your growing space and I can assure you, you’ll be proud of your results.

By composing, I have turned a grey rocky patch of soil, only good for weeds into a space to grow. I can now grow at least 70% of the food for my family and even a few lucky friends to eat.

With the help of super digester bokashi grains watch how I turn this bucket of mussel shells, bones and peel into gorgeous soil.

Here’s a quick video to help you get started. Make your own compost! (via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMXYAoLSnCY)

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Keep in touch with how Lend and Tend is blossoming.

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Summer gardening fun

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Book: Hungry City; How Food Shapes Our Lives.  By Carolyn Steel

Before the 2nd World War was over, London grew most of its own food. 

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Yc95nqPwtccC&pg=PA312&lpg=PA312&dq=before+the+2nd+world+war+london+grew+most+of+its+own+food&source=bl&ots=ywRUQWf61_&sig=ZyBdtRiD1exWogIQLDHUSOkcVvA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PNKCVe6nOtLZsASi-Z-ADw&ved=0CFcQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=before%20the%202nd%20world%20war%20london%20grew%20most%20of%20its%20own%20food&f=false

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Here’s the new logo! What do you think? Do let us know ; ) 

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Product Review! This is a great advert! However it wastes a lot of soil, so once you’ve popped out the clump of soil containing the weed root you have to bang out the soil and put it back in the garden again. 

Fun to Use: 5 out of 5

Durability: 2 out of 5 (Mine broke so I had to get another, but the new one’s been fine for about 4 months)  

Dramatic Advertising Campaign: 5 out of 5 (Cause to buy)

If you’d like me to review any garden tools make a suggestion. 

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So so so perfumed. I wish I could bottle this. 

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It looks beautiful in all sorts of purples and pinks this season. Good job my lippie matches.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt-YhQDxRaM)

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What is Lend & Tend? See unused gardens around you? Wish you had a garden yourself? Maybe you already have a garden but no time to do any gardening or perhaps can’t manage it?   How about Lending and Tending?   Garden Owners, you can offer your garden or even just part of it to someone who'd like some space to grow.  We can get the garden-less gardening! Patch-Match…On your grounds.   So help a neighbour with maintenance, or CropSwap in your community. Grow. Locally! Find allotment-like space without the wait.   Tend to a garden for someone who’s Lending their garden.  Join Lend and Tend!  It’s a  new way to make Gardening Friends.