St Leonard’s Church

Shoreditch

Here’s another plantless pic – this time St Leonard’s Church in Shoreditch. Come 21st of May it will have an ‘Oranges & Lemons’ garden as part of the Chelsea Fringe.

The Oranges & Lemons theme comes from the nursery rhyme, in which the church gets a mention: ‘When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch’. If it looks vaguely familiar, it’s because it stars in the sitcom Rev.

This is the second Fringe garden that I’m involved with and in many ways it’s more ambitious than the first (see previous post). It’s much bigger for starters, and it needs funding – several thousand pounds-worth. Plus there’s the small matter of cladding the church pillars and tree trunks in fake oranges and lemons (if anyone has any ideas, please let me know!).

The designer, Dan Shea, has come up with an ambitious plan and the aim is to get as many passersby to visit the garden as possible, enticing them in not only with lovely planting but also music, drinks and deckchairs.

This church doesn’t do things by halves – it shelters and rehouses homeless people, runs groups for addicts and puts on gigs (it has amazing acoustics, apparently). So the garden will need to do it justice.

4 thoughts on “St Leonard’s Church”

  1. It sounds like the garden will be just part of a multi-media-awarness-and-fund-raising-initiative.
    Do any of the citrus importing or juicing firms need their public image sweetened? Perhaps one’s got some old billboard posters of oranges knocking about that you could wrap round the columns.
    Huw

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