Monthly Archives: August 2014

IncrEdible Education

Since March we have been working on education packages for early years, primary, secondary and tertiary education. This is an exciting project as we hope it will bring food to the fore in many of our schools and colleges, opening conversation about where our food comes from, how food systems work and how we can improve those systems going into the future.

We are working with UWE to bring about Edible UWE, which will see students access the community garden there and work alongside the grounds manager to make this space productive with the food grown being acccessible to all the students on site. We will be running growing challenges throughout the year, with the first being #toohotforUWE, a chilli growing challenge that will begin on 1st October, and hosting talks and film events for the students in order to keep the food debate ongoing within the institution. We will also be looking for places for UWE students interested in food production to vounteer and find out more about how food production works within a fairly urban environment.

Our early years to secondary team are working on a project that will see food growing as a metaphor for life, going from preparation to growing, maintenance and harvest over the year. Obviously this will be slightly different for every school involved, with some having huge amounts of outdoor space and some having very little, but by looking at the spaces available we want to give every child some sort of  growing and eating experience and to talk about food and open the conversations around food and its production  and distribution. We will engage not just with the children, but with PTA’s and parents to ensure this is a full community project for the school and we hope to find some mentors who can go into the schools to perhaps talk about their growing experiences or to work with the children on the gardens or plots they have.

What is truly exciting from Incredible Edible Bristol’s point of view about these projects, is that we get too talk to the future generations of growers, policy makers, restauranteurs, allotment holders, and above all eaters. We have begun to set outa series of expectations that each school will need to work towards to become an IncrEdible school, and we will post these once we have finalised them.

If you know of a school/college/early years centre that would like to be involved in our project they can email us at sara@ediblebristol for further information and help.

 

 

No Comments Education, General News

The Chaos of an Incredible Edible Summer

The summer has flown by in a haze of activity which has included bringing the garden at The Vench in Lockleaze back into production, alongside our youngest volunteer Megan and lots of the children who access the Adventure Playground and the youth services that are all on site.

Edible Fishponds has begun with the determination of Carol Laslett, and continues into the autumn with plans not only for the bed that has already been begun, but for the next bed along Straits Parade as well. Special thanks must go to Simms Hill Harvest for donating plants to this project.

We have taken on a bed, called the Arup bed, as it used to be looked after by someone from Arup, a nearby company, and so far have cleared it of weeds with the amazing help of Good Gym Bristol and are going to sow it with green manures to help improve the soil overwinter, and prepare it for spring plantings.

The work on both Dove Street and Marlborough Hill Street continues. Marlborough Hill Street has now begun to be planted and although it’s going to take some time to get the soil into a really good state, it is starting to look like a garden and a definite improvement on the buddlia and rubbish strewn mess we found there in the beginning.

Our work with UWE continues as we prepare for the chaos that is Freshers Week where we will engage with students in various ways, encouraging them to use their community garden and to take part in our chilli growing challenge #tohotforuwe We hope this will lead to monthly work parties at the community garden as well as an ongoing conversation around food and all the issues that surround our current food systems.

Work also continues in Millennium Square where out third bed went in yesterday. This bed is full of winter brassicas, alliums and herbs as well as 4 beautiful apple trees. We also replanted our first bed with lettuces where the first crops had been harvested and netted the brassicas both there and in bed 3 against the ever annoying pigeons.

The orchard at All Hallows continues to be planned and worked on and the beds in St Matthias Park are also still being reconfigured so that we can start to plant them.

Castle Park continues to flourish and it is great to see that the veg in  it has been so well used. The chard is having a bit of a second flush so make sure you all continue to use the food-after all, that’s what it’s there for!!

Going into the autumn we have exciting new projects coming on board as well as projects where we are collaborating with other groups for Green Capital projects. These are all very exciting and as soon as we know what is going ahead, we will let you know.

Our greatest challenge heading forwards is getting together crews of volunteers to help us progress. If you are interested in receiving our monthly(ish) newsletter then please email us at info@ediblebristolorguk.wpcomstaging.com and we will add you to the list. We also post everything to FB, Twitter and here so that you can constantly catch up with what we are doing and where we need help!!

Looking forward to digging with you all soon.

Events for you to get involved with include volunteering on amazing projects like this at Dove Street, Kingsdown

Events for you to get involved with include volunteering on amazing projects like this at Dove Street, Kingsdown

 

 

No Comments Community Gardens, Events, Food Justice, Gardening with Nature, Recruitment & Volunteering

Edible Fishponds Begins!!

Last Saturday, in between squally showers, Edible Fishponds began to come to fruition. Carol Laslett has been working really hard to make this happen and it was wonderful to see all that hard work begin to pay off. The beds opposite the shops in Straits Parade belong to the shops opposite so we approached the Co-op and asked if they would let a bed be used for edibles, to which they kindly said yes. the idea behind the way we have begun to address the planting is that a lot of the plants haven’t really had the care and attention they might need, so we heavily pruned Salias that had gone over, removed a lot of weeds and even more rubbish, and then planted the plants in between the plants that were left. As time goes on more and more of the old plants will be removed or moved around, and eventually the bed will be choc full of edibles for the community in Fishponds to use.

We must really thank Sims Hill Harvest at this point as they incredibly kindly donated a huge amount of plants to the bed, including leeks, swiss chard, leef beets and kales, most of which will be ready in late autumn and winter. We also added a couple of gherkin plants which hopefully the slugs will leave alone, some parsley and some seeds of coriander and salad leaves. We have noted that also a couple of calendula plants have been added to the bed so we hope to see more community involvement in the bed very soon.

The next work day will be announced soon and we will add more to the planting then as well as removing some of the very sorry Hyssop plants that were covered in bees as they were in full flower last weekend. We will replace them with herbs and veg plants and we will be careful to ensure that we add enough pollinators into the mix for the bees that obviously use this area regularly to feed.

Before we began!

Before we began!

 

Leeks

Leeks

Parsley being watered in.

Parsley being watered in.

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No Comments Community Gardens, General News

Adventures at The Vench

The Vench is the Adventure Playground and associated buildings and land in Lockleaze, an area of Bristol to the north east of the Gloucester Road. We were invited by Learning Partnership West to take a look at their garden which was sadly unloved and needed some care and attention to bring it back to life. We have been working steadily on the garden with children from the adventure playground and some of our wonderful volunteers, for the last 3 weeks and hopefully we are beginning to make a difference.

The project continues for the next 3 weeks and by the middle of September hopefully the beds will at least be cleared, the pond area cleared and the beds either full of food or of green manures, feeding the soil ready for next years growing season. Hopefully Incredible Edible Bristol will maintain a relationship with the Vench, learning Partnership West and Groundworks, who have just taken over the care of The Vench, and see young people growing food in their community and for their community. Eventually it would be fantastic to expand the space out of The Vench and into the community of Lockleaze.

If you’d like to get involved in this project please come along between 1.30 and 4.30 on Wednesdays. We would love to see you.

These beds were full of weeds so we have weeded and improved the soil with compost

These beds were full of weeds so we have weeded and improved the soil with compost

We helped the young people to paint the beds

We helped the young people to paint the beds

Volunteers Andy and Dwaine sorting out the area by the pond

Volunteers Andy and Dwaine sorting out the area by the pond

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No Comments Community Gardens, Recruitment & Volunteering

St Matthias Park and the Food For Free Project

A little while ago the amazin people of the Bristol Wood Recycling Project gave us some planters that had been given to them by a local restuarant who no longer needed them. They were delivered to St Matthias Park and will be turned into planting beds for food. The concept behind all projects that are in open spaces is that the food is there to be taken by anyone, and it is actually vital that the food is used or else it just becomes a waste and there is enough waste food in the world without us adding to that pile!!

The Food For Free project began in Austen, Texas and helps people to grow food in their front gardens that can then be used as part of the project, with the basic idea being that whatever is left over is left by the garden with a Food For Free sign so that people know that the produce is there to be taken. As we are beginning to grow in parks and public spaces it seemed obvious that we become a satellite of this project in the UK. So far there are Food For Free beds in Castle Park and Millennium Square but watch this space for more info as we expand the project. There is more info about the Food For Free Project here

On 17th August in St Matthias Park we will be holding a volunteering event to make the beds useable and fill them with compost ready for planting. Please do come along. More info can be found about that event here

Food For Free

Food For Free

 

No Comments Community Gardens, Events, General News, Recruitment & Volunteering

Millennium Square #2

Our Millennium Square project is gaining momentum with the second bed now prepped and planted. This bed has 4 beautiful pear trees as well as a whole range of strawberry varieties that should see a really long fruiting period from early through to late summer.
The idea behind this bed was to show that edible plants that spread across the soil such as strawberries, can be used as groundcover plants and are not only really productive, but also keep the weeds down as they make a carpet of green across the ground.
Once again a huge thank you to Almondsbury Garden Centre for providing the plants.

 

All age groups helping!!

All age groups helping!!

Strawberry planting

Strawberry planting

The finished bed

The finished bed

No Comments Community Gardens, General News, Partnerships and Collaborations

St Katherine’s School

On the last day of the summer term we went out to St Katherine’s school in Pill to visit an incredible project that is run by the teacher who is the head of the team that teaches Hospitality in the school.
St Katherines’s is a secondary school with around 1000 children and they are one of the very few holders of a gold Food For Life award from the soil association. On visiting it is obvious why as the school grounds are full of growing beds that were full of food. There were typical allotment type plots, an area of orchard and a fully functioning, if small, forest garden space that was covered in soft fruit when we visited.
So, you might ask, what happens to this food? Next door to the school is The Leaf, the school’s very own restaurant, which opens to the local community once a week and which bases it’s menus on what is available rom the garden on that day. The students taking Hospitality get to learn what cooking and serving in a real restaurant is like, the community has a central place to meet and share food together, and the produce from the garden gets used. Perfect.
In November we will be supporting St Katherine’s in its yearly Food Festival-a week during which all lessons are aimed to be taught with food as the central topic. This is something we would like to help other schools to roll out too, to help open the food discussion with young people and see how they feel their lives are touched by food

St Katherine's Forest Garden

St Katherine’s Forest Garden


One of the allotment type gardens

One of the allotment type gardens

No Comments Community Gardens, Education, General News, Inspiring Action