Last year we spent a considerable amount of time working with other food growing organisations to plan a project that would take part during Bristol’s year as European Green Capital, 2015 and were overjoyed to hear, on Christmas Eve, that we had been awarded the strategic grant to bring this project to fruition.

Working alongside Grow Bristol and Bee the Change, we will be installing a trail of food growing gardens and spaces that will begin on platform 3 of Temple Meads station, and will follow a set route, that will be announced soon that ends up at our food gardens at Millennium Square, on which we are working with Almondsbury Garden Centre and At@Bristol.

The Incredible Edible Bristol gardens will be installed during workshops where we will show people how to build, grow and finally harvest and eat these gardens, giving skills to people who can then take these skills back to their communities to create new or build on existing projects, which we will help and continue to support as part of the legacy of this project. Grow Bristol will be highlighting aquaponics and how successful this technique of growing is for both production of vegetable but also for production of protein in an urban environment. Bee the Change will install a couple of safely placed bee hives and we will ensure that there are also pollinator beds so that the bees have places to forage for nectar.

We at Incredible Edible Bristol believe this project is exciting in various ways. It will give everyone in  Bristol the opportunity to learn new skills around growing food with specific point being made to growing food in the urban landscape. We will also be able to signpost people towards their local community projects as well as enabling them to find the support from ourselves to set up new projects. We are also looking forwards to introducing this project to the schools we are working with and engaging some young people with the project in various ways, including bee-keeping. But most of all we are excited to be putting food into the centre of our city that will be available for everyone to harvest and eat, and therefore making fresh food, organically grown, available to all.

Strawberry planting