Everyone has a story. Secondary school teacher Bunmi Otubushin has found a community of plant lovers in Graham Street Park and is learning more about growing food online. Here Bunmi explains how growing is giving her back her zest for life after her Mother passed. Interview by Nicola Baird
Bunmi Otubushin: “I met lots of users of the park during the first lockdown, they have seen the bare earth of February transformed into an edible city garden. It was a time when all the garden centres were closed so curiosity was peaked, and then the question would be asked, ‘Where did you get the seeds during lockdown?’. That starts a conversation and so I talk about my Mother passing, they’ve been really kind. (c) Islington Faces
It’s September and experienced RE, philosophy and ethics teacher Bunmi Otubushin is at her busiest. The school term has just begun – she’s taken on a new role at a secondary school in Crouch End where she used to teach 13 years ago – and there’s a harvest to deal with. “My mum had an apple tree and I still need to peel and blanch those apples. And in the park there are lots of kale, tomatoes, pumpkin leaves, and some chive to cut. No one says how much work gardening is. You have to prep and preserve all of this. So, tonight I’ll peel and blanch all the apples and then use for chutneys. Making chutney takes two days and you also need to make sure all the bottles are sterilised – it’s work. It made me think about the garden and if I had planted in succession, every two weeks, then I wouldn’t have a glut of a harvest.”
Bunmi’s enthusiasm is enough to make anyone want to start growing and cooking. But it turns out that Islington is lucky to have her.
“I’ve lived here in Angel for four years now and enjoy the community. I know my neighbours here,” she says. And those neighbours have been a big part of her support network as 2020 has been a tough year because on 4 March her Mum died suddenly.
“I’ve been teaching for 20 years and in February I left a deputy head job to reclaim some work life balance. I was in school for 12-14 hours a day, and found I was having less and less time for myself. I left and thought I’d go to New Zealand – but when I arrived there my Mum passed away a day later.” And so Bunmi returned to a lockdown London, shell-shocked. It is was connecting with gardening that helped Bunmi deal with her grief.
“There are so many things my green-fingered mum would do in her garden. My Mum comes from a country place in Jamaica called St Thomas. We’ve got a Zoom book club and we were talking about how being Black became associated with urban, but when you look at it it’s the opposite from an ancestral point of view. When my Mum came to England, they moved from the countryside of Jamaica to a bustling city. They were used to living off the land. My grandad would plant everything and anything. Now I feel so lucky to be able to grow my own food and that was so important to my Mum when she bought her house in Enfield. She had an option between a 3-bed house with a big kitchen and a huge garden or a bigger house with a smaller garden. My mum choose the house with the bigger garden.”
The gardening passion has clearly passed to Bunmi. Islington Faces first heard about her as the ‘wonderful woman creating a community garden in Graham Street park,’ which she says was inspired first by needing to plant her Mum’s seeds and then starting a gardening course.
“Mum’s seeds were put in the earth and the crops she intended to grow were sown. They weren’t wasted. My Mum had a friend called Mr Bennet who had an allotment. He’d always give my Mum pumpkins and she kept the seeds. After she died, I just planted pumpkin everywhere and put all the seeds down. I really do love pumpkin! In Jamaica there is Saturday soup – a huge pot that is made with pumpkin and what my Mum used pumpkin for. Everywhere you go in Jamaica everyone knows what it is, there are tasty finger-shaped dumplings called spinners, yam, Irish potatoes (to distinguish from sweet potatoes), and coco yam in the soup. It takes a long time to make because of all the vegetable preparation. Mum liked growing the ingredients too. One year she grew a pumpkin and my three-year-old nephew rode over the stalk on his little bike and my mum was so devastated because that would have been a really big pumpkin. So, when I found the pumpkin growing at Graham Street park, I felt as excited as she would have been. She would have been watching that pumpkin every day and then once the stalk cut it’s finished, ready for Saturday soup.”
From July, Bunmi volunteered at the Graham Street park kiosk. When she could she’d bring fresh veg from the park and always a great deal of enthusiasm to the cafe: “My aim this year was to explore and find out what I loved doing, so when I came back from New Zealand I began a gardening course and really enjoyed it. I thought ‘how can I do this and earn a living out of it?’” The answer may not have been totally figured out but Bunmi’s newfound gardening skill has seen her also join a one-day-a-week permaculture course.
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Bunmi Otubushin: “It’s really nice to plant things – green tomato chutney and now make green tomato ketchup – you still have the sweetness, add sugar and apple cider vinegar plus pimento and a bit of chilli. It’s sweet and there’s a bit of spiciness because of the addition of scotch bonnet. It works well with an omelette.” (c) Islington Faces
5 place Bunmi loves in Islington
- I really like walking through Camden Passage. I enjoy the buzz. I don’t eat there – I’ve not eaten in any of the restaurants, but I like the way people take it slowly in Camden Passage.
- I love Abigail Ahern on 12-14 Essex Road. It’s an interior design shop with a lot of faux botanicals. Sometimes you want to have a plant in a bathroom or hallway but if like mine it has got no windows or natural light if I put a plant in there it would definitely die. So the faux botanicals – I’ve got trailing rosemary, Mother in law’s tongue and pampas grass – mean you can have a bit of greenery and they are nice to see it. You can go in and just enjoy the shop too.
- I love going to the charity shops in this area – the furniture shops. Past Caring on 54 Essex Road (open Mon-Sun, 12-6pm) have had serious money off me lately and it’s nice to have a browse! I just bought a beautiful African drum for £45 and it sits underneath an Ercol table. It looks fab. I’ve bought so many pieces from there. They look so good in my contemporary setting. I also like the Crisis on Upper Street.
- Chapel Market is great for fruit and veg. I bought a box of lemons – 10 massive lemons for £1. To be able to go buy fruit and veg at a reasonable price in Islington that’s good. I made the fruit into homemade lemonade syrup which always sells out in the kiosk. And I also used them for the cold brew ice tea.
- I love Graham Street Park for the community it’s created. I’ve lived in my block for four years and one day someone who is a trustee said it would be good to get some help. I couldn’t get an allotment in Islington because there is such a waiting list so I said yes I’ll help out. At first, I helped making mulled wine for Christmas and then I got more involved and now we are all rallying around. We’ve got something communal which we discuss and look after. And from that friendships have happened and now I have prolonged conversations. Graham Street Park kiosk is open for homemade lunch, cakes, fruit drinks and tea on Sundays from 11am-6pm in the summer months.
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Bunmi’s Mum was an inspiring gardener. After she passed, her pumpkin seeds were distributed to the family who ensured they would be planted. and the potato she’d started to chit were also sown and produced a fine crop that were used for a potato salad. “Those new potatoes were so good,” says Bunmi Otubushin laughing. (c) Islington Faces
Gardening joys
Bunmi especially liked the way gardening felt simultaneously rewarding and exciting. “I like being excited. And it takes me out of my grief. When I saw that big pumpkin in the park, which I’d grown, I was ecstatic and it takes me naturally – without trying – out of sadness. It was also knowing gardening was something my Mum loved doing and to know they were her seeds.
Bunmi used her pumpkin to make pumpkin cake to sell in the kiosk, and was thrilled because: “It had so much flavour!” She also had success with tomatoes, but admits that, “I couldn’t leave a 90cm space. The tomatoes I grew in rows and didn’t prick them out because I didn’t know all this stuff, so they got really bushy. I didn’t know you had to stake them when they were small else you damaged the roots. Then one of our members mentioned Organic Lea and I started an organic gardening course on 8 July. We started with soil and then they taught us how to prick out seedlings.”
Bunmi Otubushin also has many plants in her home. “My yucca is beautiful but got really leggy looking for the sun so it’s not standard looking. It’s like a curly yukka and I’ve got a succulent with these amazing lotus flowers, but the leaves are really furry like that plant rabbit’s ears. I think in lockdown a lot of people; missed human touch but these plants are soothing to touch and it is good for seedlings to be touched. I inherited about eight plants from my mum. I live facing the canal so I’m making my window have lots of green on it so it looks like the indoor and outside merged.” (c) Islington Faces
For years Bunmi has been a skilled cook, and her lucky friends often get homemade treats as gifts. When Islington Faces meets her it may still be three months before Christmas but she’s already got plans to use her harvest to create stress free gifts. “I’m going to do a cherry green tomato marmalade and include it with a cheese board presents. I’ll make friends and family a little hamper with nice bits and homemade seed crackers. I never get stressed for Christmas,” she says.
Despite such an impressive 2020 crop, it was the pumpkin grown from her Mum’s saved seeds that meant the most. That’s why Bunmi is so pleased to have added to her sentimental crockery store: “When going through my Mum’s house there were things the family and friends wanted: everything meant something to each of us. I took the Saturday soup bowls which are enormous. Those bowls fit a lot of food in, but we’d always have seconds! Mum would tell this story of a woman who was looking after a rich woman’s kids and how that woman would take out all the meat to give to her children and then the poor woman would give the liquid to her children. When they complained she’d say that was the best food. ‘It’s the best food you can eat. This is soup with hard work in it’.
It’s clear that hard work with love is the best of gifts. And tasty too.
- During the summer Graham Street Park kiosk is open on Sunday from around 11am and doesn’t usually close until 6pm says Bunmi “because we get chatting”. In autumn and winter the kiosk is often open on sunny, dry Sundays selling hot and cold drinks, ice cream and homemade treats. There may even be special winter events including mulled wine. No cash: no problem as there’s now a QR code so you can make contactless payments.
- Graham Street Park is off Graham Street. It has a playground, seating by the City Road Basin, a community food growing garden that’s bigger than you think and the kiosk. Enjoy.
- Find out more info on Instagram @grahamstreetpark
- Graham Street is currently fundraising to add extra community spirit to the area including a plaque for Crystal Hale – who helped found islington Boat Club. See www.givey.com/grahamstreetparkfundraiser
