Tag Archives: community gardening
Birmingham’s first Big Dig Day
Saturday March 16th saw the first ‘Big Dig Day’ in Birmingham. Across the weekend, over 30 grow sites, allotments & community gardens opened their doors to all.
Although the weather forecast was non-too hopeful, groups all around the city put this aside, and welcomed new and existing volunteers to many varied and fun events.
Visiting my first event of the day, I arrived at Edible Eastside, to be met by Jayne & Rob. Lizzie Bean soon arrived and work began in earnest on the next stages of the earth oven.
Despite the rain, volunteers soon started to arrive, and with a fire lit, and work underway, I took my leave to visit Park Lane Garden Centre in Aston for the second stop of the day.
Park Lane were beginning their work on a new community garden next door, and as well as welcoming volunteers, Julia took time to show Clare Savage and I the plans and setting for the new garden.
Big Dig News……..
Birmingham Food Growers NEED YOU!
On the 16th March food growing projects across Birmingham will be opening their doors, gates and sheds to locals in order to introduce you to their sites, start the growing year and get help from volunteers to complete a range of activities (tree planting, seed sowing, soil preparation and MORE!). Across the city, 26 sites have signed up so far….more on the way.
If you want to find out what’s happening there are lots of projects signing up http://bigdig.org.uk/
Community food growers meeting at Birmingham Botanical Gardens
Are you interested in urban food growing, as an individual or part of a community group?
On the 16th January Big Dig Brum is holding a meeting at Birmingham Botanical Gardens.
As well as an opportunity to meet new groups, gather contacts and get ideas, the meeting will also include short presentations by local author and gardening journalist Alys Fowler and Mike Hardman (Birmingham City University) on the need, importance and context of growing food in Birmingham.
Eating, growing and involving – the power of food to bring communities together
Around 60 local residents and members of local community groups enjoyed a food sharing session on Sunday 30th September at the Coplow Street Grow Site in Ladywood.
The Taster session was the first of a series of events organised by the North Summerfield Residents and the Black Environment Network which revolve around engaging with ethnic minority communities to celebrate, grow and share knowledge of food and food growing.
This first event of this new project to link local communities with food growing opportunities centred around a food tasting session.
New slant on urban farming? Biomass for local energy generation grown on contaminated land
I’d never thought of using contaminated urban land to grow biomass before. But that’s exactly what I heard about at a New Optimists Forum meeting last night at Aston Business School.
And here’s the story:
Grove Road Gardening Project
Terry McCarthy is Social Secretary of the Grove Road assisted living estate in Kings Heath. He recently showed me round an exciting gardening project there.
Mere months into the project, the residents have a big enclosed garden space, an ornamental seating area, a greenhouse and newly-built trellises for climbing plants.
