Water, water everywhere and n’er a cocktail to drink

I didn’t choose a good day for my walk; a gun-metal grey sky was chucking it down from dawn yesterday until late in the afternoon.

This was a huge pity as the first place I wanted to visit was the overgrown piece of waste land just behind the Leopold Park and the Natural History Museum that is used as an alternative (and illegal) picnic ground in summer and has been partially taken over by a community urban gardening group.

This year it functions as one of Tok Toc Knock’s info and meeting points where, on days with less inclement weather, one can find info and lemonade in the afternoons and cocktails in the evenings. The very original Flemish performance and installation artist Benjamin Verdonck has created a suitable structure there to facilitate encounters. However, Verdonck’s installation didn’t include a device to measure the rainfall that fell yesterday, even though there were some ironically soggy handouts about drinkable water lying around in the tent.

I found Benjamin’s Friche Eggevoort deserted. But, sometimes, these urban wastelands yield all sorts of delightful secrets. So, suitably clad in rainproofs and wellies, I sallied forth into the grounds through a gap in the fence and found a wealth of edible wild plants (commonly known as ‘weeds’): sorrel, plantain, nettles, dandelions, sweet cicely, wild garlic, dead nettles, Good Kind Henry (also known as wild spinach), blackberries and more. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall would be proud of me and if I’d had a plastic bag to hand I could easily have collected a free lunch in about 5 minutes.

There are also square vegetable patches, a home-made pond with fish and irises (their rhizomes house the micro-organisms that perform the work of purifying the water), and a lovely permaculture herb spiral made from old bricks belonging to the community gardeners.

The chairs and tables are made from recycled furniture and pallets. And there are colourful bits of croqueting hanging from branches and poles like flowers to add the artistic touch. Suddenly, I could barely hear the roar of the traffic for the deafening choir of birds, singing in celebration of Nature’s triumph over the city!

I will have to return on a barmy evening for those Tok Toc Knock cocktails.