Winterbourne House & Garden Update
Winterbourne House & Garden have been busy in the past month and you can read all about what they have been up to at their blog Digging For Dirt. First of all they have published their March Notebook with gardening tips, tasks and tricks for budding gardeners throughout March; from planting your early potatoes to deadheading Hydrangeas, it’s your go to guide for your garden this month. The Opportunist is a piece that continues on in their historical series, looking at Birch trees colonization of Britain and their lineage in the Northern Hemisphere as a whole and is well worth a read. Finally they’ve uploaded some more wonderful pictures to their Snapshot section including some wonderfully captured mushrooms, head to their Coach House Gallery for more shots and information.
Growing Birmingham Networking Event – Tuesday 12th April – 7pm – 9pm
Join Growing Birmingham at the Botanical Gardens for our annual networking event. Coinciding with the Big Dig weekend, the evening will contain a variety of workshops including: support with funding, social media, growing to sell, volunteer engagement and more. Attendees are offered the chance to meet people in their field, discuss current projects and maybe even come up with some new ones!
Open to all, for more information click the link here.
Bloom in Birchfield – Spring Event
Livingston Road C
ommunity Allotment are having a Spring event on the 2nd April to launch a ‘Friends of Bloom in Birchfield’. The event will run between 1-4pm and they are looking for volunteers to help them run the day! They want everyone who wants to see a cleaner and more beautiful Birchfield to join together under the ‘Bloom in Birchfield’ banner. Get down and get involved with what promises to be a brilliant day.
For more information please e-mail Rob at [email protected]
Winterbourne House & Garden Update
Things are afoot for the new season at Winterbourne House & Garden and their February Notebook is the place to go for your all your gardening tips at the end of this month. They also have a new section on their website called Snapshot, a place where all the best photos from the month that has been can be showcased (our favourite’s the ‘Edgbaston Pool’ shot!). Finally they have a short history lesson in the form of ‘A Fine Old Nut Alley‘ talking about the Hazelnut Walk that shrouds one of the paths through the garden, spanning from it’s beginnings in the early 1900’s to present day, covering it’s uses and it’s care.
For more information about what’s going on at Winterbourne, head over to their Digging For Dirt blog!
Big Dig in Birmingham – 2016
The Big Dig returns to Birmingham this April for the third year running. The event will be on the 16th April and will see gardens across the city throw open their doors and give anybody the chance to get down and get digging to really kick start the growing season. Last year was a great success with over 1,600 people taking part across the UK, 1,207 of which had never been involved with the gardens before!
We’re keen to top that number this year so keep your eyes out for further information on the gardens that will be involved, free seeds giveaways and networking events which will all be advertised on here in the coming weeks and months.
Between now and then head over to The Big Dig website and take a look at some of the photos from last year and get inspired to make this year bigger and better! Alternatively, pop over to our Birmingham map and register your own event here.
Urban Harvest Job Opportunity
Urban Harvest is now well known in Birmingham for their fantastic work in collecting and utilising unpicked fruit in the Northfield are of the city.
They now have an Immediate vacancy for a co-ordinator for this years picking.
Please contact Georgia at Northfield Ecocentre, or follow the link here
Mapping Birmingham’s Community Growing Spaces
It has been a while in getting there, Growing Birmingham are please to be able to make available for the first time a map of Birmingham’s Community Gardens, Growing Spaces and Community Orchards.
The map is available here
We know this is by no means complete, and we can add to it all the time, so if your local space is missing and you want it adding then please let us know in a comment below or by e-mail to [email protected]
Some of the spaces on the map already have more information linked to them, web site addresses and the like, we hope to add pictures too soon.
Fantastic one day community garden course at Winterbourne House & Garden
New community garden start-up course (FREE to NHS staff), Birmingham, 19th March
FCFCG is running a new training course for people who want to set up a community growing project or who are already involved in one but would like more training. GETTING STARTED will cover topics including policies and legislation, how to consult the community and hold a public meeting, and also includes a talk by gardener Alys Fowler.
The course takes places at Winterbourne House and Garden, Birmingham, on March 19th and costs £10 (or FREE for NHS, local authority and public health staff).
For more information, download the event poster: Community garden start-up workshop poster or contact Heidi Seary on [email protected]
Birmingham is a Big Dig City for the second year
After the success of involvement in the National Big Dig campaign in 2013, Birmingham is once again going to be a Big Dig city in 2014. Although the funding for the campaign has been in question for a few months, it’s fantastic to be able to announce that this years Big Dig activity is now confirmed, and the spring Big Dig weekend this year will be March 22nd – March 23rd 2014.
Last year over 40 gardens and community growing spaces opened their doors during the Big Dig weekend, and it would be great to top that this year.
We will be posting info of the gardens involved on Growing Birmingham as gardens sign up, but in the mean time, please go to http://www.bigdig.org.uk/birmingham/ and add your event.
Keep an eye open for further updates, or follow Growing Birmingham for messages straight to your inbox.