Celso Vaz, Victor Le Polotec, and Vita Klyuchnyk with gardener Billy Styles

A COMMUNITY garden is extending its opening hours to try and encourage more people to use it.

Located behind blocks of flats, the Octopus Community Plant Nursery offers a space for people to get together in nature. The site, just off Holloway Road near the Odeon Cinema, holds community growing workshops, as well as sending produce to food hubs across the borough.

The space was open to the public for just two hours between 10 and noon on Wednesdays but now, thanks to increased funding, it will also be open on Monday and Wednesday evenings and Saturday afternoons.

“Because it’s not on the high street, people don’t know about it,” said Katherine Lowe, community plant nursery lead practitioner for Octopus Community Plant Nursery. “The social side is a really big part of the garden. Some people have experience, some people don’t, everyone is really welcome.”

Staff at the community garden hope that the increased opening hours will encourage people who wouldn’t normally be able to get to the garden to get involved.

Taina Zavora with Sevinc Sirma and a pot of seeds at Octopus Community Plant Nursery

“It’s for families, anyone who works, young people or anyone,” said Billy Styles, who also works in the garden. “It’s just giving residents the possibility of having that space for everybody.”

The garden also has raised beds and flat surfaces, meaning it’s accessible to people of varying abilities and ages.

“It’s very inclusive, accessible and friendly,” said Ms Lowe.

The site’s new ‘Gardening and English for Speakers of other Languages’ workshop, which is a 10-week course that started April 23, has attracted native speakers of Turkish, Ukrainian, French, Brazilian and Ethiopian.

Vita Klyuchnyk and Taina Zavora, who came here two years after the start of the Ukrainian war, have been taking part in the workshop to improve their English.

“It helps us to relax,” said Ms Klyuchnyk. “It’s very nice for my knowledge about gardening and my English skills. It’s a very good feeling. In Ukraine they like gardening but here we did not hear about any opportunities, but now we’ve had a brilliant experience doing this in the UK to study new vocabulary,” said Ms Zavora.

If anyone new would like to use the garden, they can send an email to billy@­octopuscommunities.org.uk for more information.