Brighton & Hove Community Garden

Aims:

To be a place where people can meet up and learn more about food growing. We are using permaculture principles to design and work the plot.

Inspiration:

There is quite a lot going of food work going on in B&H, so lots of interest. Many people who came along to the initial TBH meetings expressed an interest so we decided to start meeting, and here we are…

Outcomes so far:

The site has not been grown on for years and years so before we broke ground, we had an observation day to make sure we weren’t going to disrupt any animals that had made the site their home (e.g. nesting birds, etc).

The site was covered in brambles so we had a jam making day – we wanted to pick loads of berries before clearing the brambles. That was back in August.

The ‘Jam Jam’(jam making day) was great – about 15 people came. We’ve now started clearing the brambles and getting seeds in the ground. We will soon be establishing a regular work day, but at the moment they are more sporadic.

Unexpected outcomes:

I’m sure there will be plenty to come!

Lessons learned:

So far so good! We just need to get more people involved.

Links and partnerships:

There is a fantastic growing project right next door to our allotment (the Whitehawk Community Food Project) who have been very supportive. They let us use their tools, and some of the people involved in the growing project are also very involved in the TBH food group and allotment. Its definitely been helpful to work with experienced growers. This will be a good opportunity to get other TBH groups (such as the buildings group) working together.

Sources of funding:

None as yet. We’ll need equipment soon, so we’ll probably have to fundraise which is difficult due to time constraints.

Sources of materials:

We’d like to use as much second-hand equipment as possible, and we may be able to find stuff for free via Freecycle or other similar schemes. We’ll also need a shelter, which will require some funds.