Worms!!

Recently, some students from UCL Engineering built a large scale wormery, designed for community gardens and have brought it to the garden for us. I am going to be looking after it and went down there today to check it out - one of our resident gardeners had kindly added the waste from his just harvested cauliflower.

Big Dig 2012

The Big Dig is an event organised by Capital Growth to link volunteers with their local community garden. We have been accepted as one of the participating gardens and are looking forward to setting our volunteers to work tidying up our existing space, moving compost and building raised beds in the new space. Our volunteers will be joining us on Friday 16th March, but the main event will be going on in gardents all over London on Saturday 17th.

We will be holding a meeting of members on Monday 12th March at 8pm in the Project Office to finalise plans for the day. What a great way to kick start the 2012 growing season!

Capital Growth Networking Event

Capital Growth is a campaign to support 2,012 new food growing spaces in London by the end of 2012. They have provided funding for our first raised beds , some training for our members and are linking us with volunteers for the 'Big Dig' on 17th March. On 23 February they held a workshop at the Finsbury Library Hall on St John St. Around 50 people attended and took part in workshops on 'starting a garden', 'composting' and 'growing and selling food'. Lots of questions were asked and answered, new connections made and most delicious food was eaten. Another great community networking event! Thanks Capital Growth.

We are official!

On 22nd of February the members of the garden met and agreed to pass our constitution. Having agreed a set of rules to guide the group we are now able to raise funds directly to support our expansion and development. This is the first step to getting the resources we need to upgrade the existing site and develop the new site. After humble beginnings three years ago, we are now officially 'Kings Cresent Community Garden' and have the paperwork to prove it!

For other groups who are looking to 'go official' in the UK, we found these model documents useful - GRANTfinder Ltd and Voluntary Action Sheffield.

Some photos from last years harvest time

Ready, Steady, Grow! Competition

To raise funds for some new raised beds on the new site, we have decided to approach local businesses to 'sponsor a bed'.

On the bed they kindly sponsor, will be a plaque with their company logo, but more importantly, they will get entry to our Ready, Steady, Grow competition- the resident who is lucky to get the box they sponsor will then grow food in it, and at harvest time, we will be inviting a representative from the business down to the garden to join us and compete with the other businesses in a harvest festival cook off, using the food grown in the raised bed!

The competition will be judged by Dianne Abbott and hopefully covered by the local paper... what a great way to meet locals and other local businesses, gain publicity for the business and at the same time give something back to the local community.

Watch this space for how we are moving forward with our idea!!

Moving forward...

Since being granted some space on Kings Crescent estate 3 years ago, we have had two successful growing seasons and have successfully implemented the plans we outlined in our original proposal, by growing the number of people involved, improving the space (building raised beds, getting a bbq, picnic table) and making it more functional (designing and using a compost system) We have also been quite successful in bringing the members together as a group by having regular meetings and garden days to ensure the upkeep of the space. We are constantly trying to find ways of improving and growing the garden.

Now, we have been given some new space on the other side of the estae to extend the garden! It will be utilised by the residents that live on that side, making it far more accessible, leaving the current space to be used by the residents who live closest to it.

We will build a number of raised beds, which would be allocated out for members to have as a personal growing space, or can be shared. 

We would also like to have some communal areas, such as a herb garden, berry patch and a small orchard, and grow a small hedge to encourage wildlife into the garden.

In addition the practicalities above, looking at the bigger picture, what we want to achieve more unity within the residents of the estate, culturally and cross generationally, to give them a space where culture and age does not matter, to not only grow things, but to make friends and bring people together in the universal language of growing food.

Produce

Getting Started

Our garden kicked off in 2009 when Jill introduced Kelly and Sarah, who were both keen to start a garden on the estate. With advice from Bob, the tennants advisor, we identified a suitable site on the estate. Staff from Hackney Homes arranged for their contractors to install a gate and a shed. 

To get our garden going we decided to follow a method used in a Groundworks project in Shoreditch which was to create temporary growing plots by filling large builders’ bags with compost and topsoil. We purchased 40 bags from an on-line builders’ supplier, and scavenged several more from a building site. 4 Tonnes of compost were purchased from the North London Recycling facility, which was mixed with topsoil found through the Freecycle on-line network and from a nearby house undergoing renovation. We installed two water butts to collect runoff from the shed roof. The summer of 2009 was our first growing season. The total cost of the garden set up in the first year, including tools, was less than £600, funded by the TRA.

Growing Food on Kings Crescent

We are a volunteer community vegetable garden that has been up and running for 3 years, consisting of around 20 residents from various age and cultural groups, who have been growing food in a currently disused space on the estate.