Community Food Growing in a Garden City – New project
Category: Community Gardening
Getting to grips with fruit tree planting- the group at Wensum View Park
You may remember that we opened Old School Garden to the public for the first time back in July. Apart from the fun (and worry!) of sharing the garden and getting people’s feedback, it was a chance to raise some money for some local ‘good causes’. The £300 raised was divided equally between gardening projects at Cawston V.C. Primary School (where I help out as a volunteer), towards the upkeep of the fabric of St. Peter’s Church, Haveringland- the ‘Church in the Fields’ you can see from our garden- and to support small – scale projects in the Norfolk Master Gardener programme.
One of the latter involved funding some new fruit trees for a Community Garden in Norwich and the Master Gardener supporting that project, Jeremy Bartlett, has written a piece about the planting event yesterday. I’m so pleased that our little fundraising effort has achieved something worthwhile- I’ll report on other projects funded in due course, but for now here’s Jeremy’s article.
‘Volunteers spent the morning of Sunday 17th November 2013 planting fruit trees and an edible hedge at Wensum View Park in Norwich, thanks in part to a Norfolk Master Gardener Grant .
The park, at the back of Turner Road in Norwich, is owned by Norwich City Council and contains a small children’s playground and a large area of grass used for games and by dog walkers. Local residents wanted to do more with the park and set up Wensum View Park Community Garden Group in early 2012. Following a public consultation by Norwich City Council earlier this year (http://www.norwich.gov.uk/Environment/ParksAndOpenSpaces/Parks/ParksImprovements/Pages/WensumViewPlayArea.aspx) work to transform the space began this autumn.
So far there have been two gardening tasks, led by Master Gardener Jeremy Bartlett, who has had previous experience setting up and maintaining Norwich’s Grapes Hill Community Garden (http://www.grapeshillcommunitygarden.org/).
In early October we created a herb bed and planted crocus bulbs. This was followed by a task on the morning of Sunday 17th November 2013 when about twenty-five volunteers planted fruit trees and an edible hedge. A Norfolk Master Gardener Grant for £45 went towards the cost of the fruit trees and the 105 small saplings for the edible hedge were supplied by the Woodland Trust.
Digging the pits for the new fruit trees
Tough work…
The second row of whips going in for the edible hedge
The finished product – just give it a few years and a little TLC…
We planted nine fruit trees: single trees of Apples “Golden Noble” and “Discovery”, Figs “Brunswick” and “Brown Turkey”, Medlar “Nottingham” and Quince “Champion”, two Plums “River’s Early Prolific” and an unnamed variety of Plum, which was donated by a local resident. The hedge consists of Elder, Dog Rose, Blackthorn, Hazel and Crab Apple and will add to the edible harvest once it is established.
Our next task, planned for January or February 2014, will be to build a raised bed for planting herbs and vegetables.
Wensum View Park Community Garden Group have now signed up as a Master Gardener household and Jeremy will continue to provide free growing advice during the next twelve months.
Wensum View Park (also known as “Wensum View play area”) is located on Dereham Road in Norwich. Its entrance is between numbers 319 and 321 Dereham Road and it is open to all, free of charge, every day during daylight hours.’
Old School Gardener
Anything to add?
I recently responded to a challenge from fellow blogger, ‘The Anxious Gardener’, to name my favourite garden. This was a light-hearted way of getting people to enter a competition to win a copy of the recent publication ‘The New English Garden’.
The competition was a ‘name out of the hat’ affair so I stood as much chance as winning as the other 30-odd entrants (and I didn’t win, so there’s another item for the Christmas list). Notwithstanding that, I thought I’d try to do the request justice and thought long and hard about where, if any one ‘where’ stood out in front of the many gardens I’ve visited, read about, seen films and pictures of.
It took some time…
In the end I came up with my nomination and set it out here and the reasons why it came out top. Oh, and I thought I’d share some pics with you too. I hope that you enjoy them.
I’ve visited and seen a few gardens over the years and it’s tricky finding one that I’d call a favourite – some have great borders or other spaces, configurations of plants, superb features and so on. Maybe its because it’s relatively fresh in my mind, but the one that does stand out is Felbrigg walled garden in Norfolk (also a local one to me and so visited quite often).
Why? Well I guess it’s the way the garden team (including volunteers and community gardeners), have managed to create a space that meets so many different needs and in a way that seems to hang together naturally:
* a warm, contained, red brick walled space, with a fountain and dovecote as strong structural elements
* glasshouses with old favourite, traditional exotics and other ‘interesting’ plants
* community food growing in plots that are obviously lovingly cared for
* a children’s gardening area complete with digging pits, tools, washing facilities and novelties such as chickens running free, willow teepees and tunnels
* newer areas set out with mediterranean – style planting, meadows and feature shrubs
* plenty of comfortable seats to entice you to stop, look and soak up the atmosphere
* lots of attractive information about the plants themselves (all the significant ones carefully and attractively labelled) as well as some of the current tasks in the garden and information/quiz sheets for the kids.
All in all a visit to Felbrigg is a tremendously rich experience where the general public, serious gardener and trained horticuluralist (and their children) can come together and have their curiosity tickled, be enthused, amazed and go away feeling regenerated.
The Garden- man made artifice?
Do you have a favourite Garden? I’d love to hear from you!! (no prizes I’m afraid)
Further information: National Trust website
Old School Gardener
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Have you ever wanted to start a community garden? With many communities building more and more high density housing , community gardens are becoming all the rage. People living in townhouses, apartments, condos and basement suites often don’t have enough room to grow plants. Although you can grow a lot of food on a balcony, some places don’t have this kind of space. Starting a community garden means looking for a piece of land that can often be leased from a landowner. Surprisingly these pieces of land are often found quite easily. Lets take a look at this tour of community gardens to see how they got started. Below is a photo of Alexandra House community garden in South Surrey. It’s hard to believe this garden is just over a year old.
The gardens are full of abundant harvests and so much fuller than the first season. This garden was built…
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I’m back from two weeks away in Devon and Cornwall and I definitely visited more gardens in that time than ever before! I’ll do articles with photos on each of these over the coming weeks, but I thought I’d ease my way back into the blogosphere with a little feature on the town of Moretonhampstead, Devon.
Located in the middle of Dartmoor, this lovely little town is a convenient stopping off point for those negotiating the narrow, winding lanes and open vistas of the Moor, and that’s just what we did on our way to visit Killerton Gardens, near Exeter.
It was a glorious sunny day and the drive over the moor from Tavistock was breathtaking. As we approached Moretonhampstead I was struck by the beautiful display of hanging baskets outside one of the pubs and then realised there were a lot more colourful floral displays around the town, so took out a few minutes to capture them. I must say the town residents, shopkeepers, local council, hoteliers etc. all seem to put an effort into beautifying the place, so congratulations to them for what was a very enjoyable mooch around, snapping as I went.
This is definitely the place to ‘hang out’ if you’re travelling the Moor and there were plenty of cyclists, motorcyclists and other tourers taking a breather here when we visited.
Old School Gardener
What if all new houses had to be built with living roofs? Imagine if your apartment rent also included free fruit and vegetables from the roof garden…
http://ecosalon.com/high-tech-green-roof-technology-in-architecture/
‘One of our nine pimped pavements of London Road Elephant & Castle @SE1. Magnificent double poppies.’
The Pothole Gardener transforms potholes, sidewalk cracks and other structural malformations into micro gardens. Guerrilla gardening to bring a little sunshine into your day! http://thepotholegardener.com/
Via Growveg
from Gardenphotos.com, via Growveg
Old School Garden 