LET’S MAKE MERTON GREENER
Merton Garden Streets is a volunteer-led initiative by local residents and businesses to make our streets greener.
Join us in this initiative to encourage street and front garden planting, improving our community well-being and delivering important environmental benefits (such as increasing wildlife, improving air quality, helping to prevent flooding).
Community planting dates are planned for 15 May, 19 June and 17 July, with flexibility for street specific dates.
TAKE PART
Help us transform Merton into a greener place to live. Everyone is welcome and no skills are required!
You can join us as:
- Street coordinator: acting as a lead point of contact for your street, registering your street into this initiative, inviting and connecting with street residents, and liaising with Merton Garden Street for logistics and support. This can be a single or shared role. Sign up here.
- Resident: if you want to participate with hands-on support in this initiative (on your own or another street) sign up to our newsletter by using the form below or emailing us at mertongardenstreets@gmail.com to receive regular news and/or register as a street coordinator above.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
- Street Coordinators register their street and liaise with residents to plan their planting day.
- Merton Garden Streets team will provide Street Coordinators with a Welcome Pack with promotional material, advice on what to plant and how.
- We can provide some plants and compost to make the scheme accessible to all, but you are encouraged to provide your own.
- Residents get together for a fun day of community planting. Street Coordinators send Merton Garden Street ‘before’ and ‘after-planting’ photos.
See our FAQ’s for more information
IS MY STREET REGISTERED?
Check this link to see if your street is registered and has a street coordinator. If your street isn’t and you want to register it please fill in this form. The benefit of registering your street is that we can then support you with lots of guidance, free plants, soil and compost (limited supply) and access to the wider community that is participating.
SPONSORING OPPORTUNITIES
We are looking for businesses to help sponsor this initiative. Sponsoring will give your business exposure to up to 1,000 households in Merton and an opportunity to get closer to our community. Find out more about sponsoring by contacting mertongardenstreets@gmail.com
PLANTING ADVICE
Here are a few general points to think about before getting started:
- Consider a mixture of evergreen plants, perennials (plants that die back in winter but grow back each year) and annuals (don’t come back the next year).
- Choose plants that don’t mind a bit of shade, poor soil and someone forgetting to water them for a couple of days.
- Avoid spiky plants that will injure pedestrians, and very invasive plants that may be removed by the council (e.g. ivy that grows up the tree)
- If adding a hard surround around the tree base, please be mindful that it doesn’t protrude into the main walkway and become a trip hazard.
Overall we advise plants that are known to be good for pollinators/wildlife.
Evergreens
- Saxifrage – low growing, flowers in spring
- Lavender – flowers attract bees
- Periwinkle – very low growing, happy under trees
- Pheasant’s tail grass – goes red/brown in Autumn
Perennials
- Sweet woodruff – low growing spreading plant with little white star shaped flowers
- Bugleweed or Ajuga – low growing spreading plant with blue/purple flowers
- Alchemilla mollis – insignificant flowers but lovely light green leaves which water sits on like jewels
- Hostas – good in deep shade, big leaves and spikes of white flowers, can be attacked by slugs
- Ferns – good in shade, most are perennial, a few are evergreen, pick smaller varieties
- Salvia – huge family of perennials with scented flower spikes attracting bees
- Sage – grey-green leaved herb
- Daisies – big brother of the daisy chain flower, attract bees
- Rudbeckia – big yellow and pink daisies including black-eyed Susan
- Primrose – small with yellow or pink flowers
- Wallflowers – flower in spring and may survive the winter
- Pony Tails grass – dies back in winter but comes back and spreads freely
Annuals
- Geraniums – a variety of colours, flower all summer
- Busy Lizzie – colourful, shade tolerantLobelia – spreading mat of blue/purple flowers
- Pansies – a variety of colours, will flower all summer if dead-headed
- Petunias – trumpet shaped flowers in a variety of colours
- Marigolds – yellow/orange flowers, do best in sun
Wildflowers: wildflowers are great for pollinators and biodiversity overall so please do give them ago but note
that they do best in poor, nutritionally deprived soil.
