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.
]]>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.
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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.
Park Lane Garden centre is such a fantastic resource for community groups, great value, and almost unique in the inner city. Plans for this year include growing vegetable plants to order for community groups. At a fantastic price too!!
Leaving Park Lane, the next stop for the day was Bishop Latimer Grow Site in Soho. Here we met with Adela, Andrew and their volunteers. The group had so many activities taking place, including building a willow arch, and the setting for their new woodland walk.
The sun came out, and it showed signs of being a lovely warm afternoon. At Bishop Latimer, I met with John, who had recently moved to Birmingham, and had used Big Dig as an opportunity to get involved in local groups in his new area…….just fantastic…this is what Big Dig is all about.
After some fantastic food, provided by Mammas Blessing, we left a sunny Bishop Latimer for our next stop of the day.
Close to Bishop Latimer is Coplow Street Grow Site, here over 30 volunteers were weeding raised beds, planting, drinking soup and learning about growing in the new polytunnel.
A real community event, with visitors from near and far. It was great to see familiar faces at Coplow Street, as well as some new ones, at the Big Dig event, which was also part of an ongoing partnership with the Black Environment Network.
Final stop of the day, and just in time was Martineau Gardens, who were holding a seed swap event for Big Dig Day. All thought the event had gone very well, and was attended by over 60 volunteers.
Although by now the rain had started in earnest, it was great to see so many happy smiling volunteers, and some great events.
A full list of the sites involved can be seen at http://www.bigdig.org.uk/birmingham/
Keep your eyes open for dates of Big Dig events throughout the year, and our Big Urban Harvest Gathering in September.
]]>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/
NOT A GARDENER? – WE NEED PHOTOGRAPHERS AND COORDINATORS TO HELP US MAKE THIS HAPPEN. If you’re a photographer and would like your pictures published online or possibly in print then please get in touch with Chris or Clare on the emails below.
If you’re a project and you want to open up your grow site on the 16th March (or around) then get in touch with Chris ([email protected]) or Clare ([email protected]) and we’ll answer any questions you may have.
If you have an event already planned then please go straight to http://bigdig.org.uk/
Grow Sites signed up to Big Dig can benefit from a 20 PER CENT DISCOUNT ON COMPOST DIRECT products either order online or over the phone http://www.compostdirect.com/ once you’ve signed up you’ll get the discount code.
If you need help with setting up a grow site, event http://bigdig.org.uk and more here http://www.bigdig.org.uk/
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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.
The meeting has a number of aims:
- To get together as many groups and individuals as possible who are interested in community growing in Birmingham
- To provide networking opportunities between those groups and individuals
- To set the context of urban food growing in the city and to learn from others
- As part of Birmingham’s Participation in The Big Dig, to discover what individuals and groups want in terms of support, events and practical training over the next 12 months and beyond.
If you are an allotment group, a friends of parks group, a community allotment or grow site, or simply an individual wanting to get involved or start something new, then this is the meeting you can’t miss.
DETAILS OF THE MEETING
Location: Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Westbourne Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham. B15 3TR.
Start: 7.00pm
Directions to the Botanic Gardens.
For further information please contact [email protected] or [email protected]
We look forward to seeing you there on the 16th January for what promises to be a valuable and interesting evening of debate, ideas and discussion.
]]>The Big Dig is a national project to engage people in community food growing projects across England, and is all about making community food growing a part of every urban landscape.
The Big Dig’s first national event across its initial six city partners took place in September 2012 and involved 116 food growing gardens and over 3,000 people.
After a successful period of working with just six cities, the Big Dig is now planning to expand and work with other cities and towns across England, and help them become hubs of food growing activity.
In London, Sustain (as part of the Big Dig) has supported the development of over 2,000 new community growing spaces as part of the Capital Growth Project, engaging people of all ages and backgrounds. The benefits are immense, not only in terms of brightening up our urban spaces, but also in terms of health, community cohesion and improved biodiversity.
Here in Birmingham we have a huge amount of activity taking place on all scales. Some is known about and widely publicised, much I feel is perhaps not, and is almost hidden away in estates and urban areas within the city.
Involvement in the Big Dig will help support these urban growing activities, as well as providing a means of publicising and developing many of these activities which so benefit the local communities. It will increase the noise about the community grow spaces we have, as well as support the development of new ones, as well as more widely publicising the many health, social and environmental benefits of growing food together.
So how can you contribute?
- Get involved . . . and start by posting a comment below about your grow space on Growing Birmingham. We’ll add it to the list!
- Volunteer at one of the many groups which are involved in community gardens; e.g. The Urban Veg Hub at Winterbourne, Martineau Gardens are just two examples
- Visit your local community growing space, or urban allotment and get involved.
- Reach out and engage the local community in your growing project or set up a group to develop a new one . . .
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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.
Other activities included a smoothie bike from the British Heart Foundation,a pakora demonstration, with the opportunity to get stuck in and make your own, as well as a presentation from Love Food Hate Waste.
Food at the event included asian bites, stuffed nastursium leaves (grown in a local garden), traditional Polish, German & Lithuanian food and of course the always handy barbeque, as well as pakora made in the demonstrations and by those who tried their hand.
All in all the afternoon was a great success, and although windy, the rain held off. Comments after the event showed that in just one afternoon we had encouraged people to view urban spaces in a different light and to see the clear benefits of community growing, as a cohesive link, as a health driver, and also as a means of having great fun.
Everyone involved is looking forward to the next event, which we plan to centre around basic learning of how to plant and what to grow.
]]>In response to public outcry the Rosario municipality, using research conducted by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), set out to solve the problem. Through targeted educating the population in farming practices and freeing up large amounts of land. This program, called Programa de Agricultura Urbana was launched in 2002 and gave rise to over 800 separate growing groups throughout the city.
As the crisis passed, some gardens were abandoned, but the majority continued to produce food as before. As the focus moved away from gardening for survival, people found other reasons to garden. Among these reasons were extra income generation, leisure and community spirit, and access to high quality food free from agro-toxins.
Although the PAU was designed as a crisis response, it is now a integral part of the city of Rosario’s local culture, and continues to provide its inhabitants with a sense of place, community pride and a considerable degree of food resilience.
]]>Located in the heart of Oslo in ‘Bjørvika’, a rocky island in the centre of a building site, the project is surrounded on all sides by roads, railways lines and industrial buildings.
One of the primary reasons for its location in an industrialised sector is the hope that ongoing monitoring with shed light on the effect of pollution on the success rates of urban gardening.
This project was planned to be temporary from the very beginning, and will only exist for three growing seasons.
As a social project, there is a large emphasis on public education – the project provides lectures for its allotments holders on a range of subjects, from keeping chickens and baking bread to a number of talks on various aspects of food growing.
The project also aims to be democratic, so every allotment holder has a say in the development of the Herligheten project.
This is an excellent example of a derelict urban site being transformed into something positive, built on the foundation of community ideals and co-creation. And as an ecological project, all gardeners at Herligheten use responsible gardening methods, ensuring minimum environmental impact, and maximum benefit for all involved.
To read more about the Herligheten urban gardening project, click here.
[Photograph by Vibeke Hermanrud, 2012]
]]>Jarred provided a brief background of Wayward Plants and how the organisation had started several sites in the London area. He focussed firstly on the Union Street Urban Orchard, a project started in 2010 to regenerate a disused site. Jarred then moved on to discuss a more recent venture, the Urban Physic Garden also located in London. This particular site was again built on derelict land, and featured a variety of innovative ideas: a pop up community garden, spaces for medicinal plants and a café.
Jarred’s talk brought to light the potential for these leftover, unused spaces, particularly for growing food in the city. He also stressed the well being angle of these sites and their overall impact on the nearby communities. One may question whether similar projects can happen here in Birmingham…can we use spaces around our own city in a similar manner; improving the health of those who surround such sites.
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