Author Archives: GHCG

This Saturday

January 10, 2013

Hello everyone,

Well it’s tipping down outside and arctic weather is predicted but that doesn’t stop us!  We’ll be in the garden 
this Saturday 12th 10pm-2pm.  
 
And there’s jobs to suit everyone – especially if you like shifting woodchip!  With the extra funding we’ve been allocated from the lottery not only are we putting in the exciting solar pump but also buying in ground stabilisation – a rubber matting we’ll grow grass through hopefully making our boggy paths accessible to everyone (even people without wellies) all year round. So we’re taking up all the woodchip in between the sleeper beds AND dragging up the terrible membrane underneath and making it all better.  There’s also signs to paint, some beds to move, apple trees who need some love, plans to make and biscuits to eat!
 
Also we’ll be planting our sweet peas soon so please bring any cardboard toilet roll/kitchen roll tubes you’ve got hanging round and also egg boxes as it’s time to start chitting potatoes.  
 
Also for your viewing pleasure is a sneak preview of the almost completed tetra-shak wall!  They said it couldn’t be done and it (nearly) has been!! 

 
See you in the garden,

 
Lucy

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Hi everyone and happy New Year!

I hope everyone has had a lovely couple of weeks and is ready is get back out in the garden and get some work done.  
 
I’d optimistically predicted we could go back to normal opening times in January but of course it’s still getting dark really early so we’ll be opening on Wednesdays this month 10am-3pm, then back to normal in February.
 
The next Saturday work day is Saturday 12th January 10am-2pm
 
Job for this month include finishing painting our beautiful sign, finishing the tetra shack wall, and beginning to build the area of new beds which has been designed with skill and creativity by our very own Diane Holness. We’ve got parsnips and leeks to eat and plans to make ready for the coming growing season.    
 
And, excitingly, just around the corner is a raised bed making workshop (more details will follow) and the Horfield Organic Community Orchard’s wassail- 

All are welcome to

Wassail Horfield Organic Community Orchard

Saturday 19th January 2013, 2 – 4pm

Toast the trees
Homemade cakes and mulled orchard juice for sale

Make merry with Pigsty Morris

Find out how to join and support a pioneering local food project

To find the Orchard (nearest postcode BS7 8JP) walk down the lane beside 22 Kings Drive (between Bishop Road and Kellaway Avenue), turn left and it’s the first gate on the right.  OR take the lane beside 134 Longmead Avenue until you come to the last gate on the left.

Contact: hocohello@gmail.com

phone: 0117 373 1587

http://www.community-orchard.org.uk

The picture is of us at our solstice celebration – thank you to everyone who came and brought delicious food and sang and feasted on the day of driving wind and cold rains.  It was a lovely way to 2012 in the garden to a close.  A year of rains and floods, delicious veg and beautiful flowers and hard work and countless cups of tea. I’ve got high hopes for 2013 and if it’s a little dryer this year then that would be nice as well.
 
See you in the garden or at the wassail,
 
Lucy
 

— 
Lucy Mitchell

Community Project Worker
The Golden Hill Community Garden: Horfield’s Accessible Allotment and Edible Forest
07506 905 394

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WIN!

December 11, 2012

ImageIt’s official! – We are the best project in Bristol!
 
We are now the multi-awarding Golden Hill Community Garden! I’m still grinning and we did ourselves proud.  A good number of our hardcore Wednesday volunteers turned up to the Green Volunteers Awards, all scrubbed up and not a welly or muddy face in sight.  We were by FAR the biggest crowd they had on stage all evening and we walked away with BEST PROJECT and the DIVERSITY AWARD.
 
Thank you to everyone whose hard work and support has contributed to this fantastic first year!!
 
But it’s not all swanky award ceremonies – work continues on at the garden and I’m very excited to announce we’ve collected enough tetra packs to start our first wall for the shelter! Just in time as the icy blasts coming down the hill are getting hard to ignore.
 
See you in the garden – don’t forget next weeks opening time 11-3 and the week after 12-2pm for gentle pottering and cake.

 
Lucy
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Winter times and dates

November 6, 2012

Our next Saturday date is Saturday 17th November 10am-2pm.  When we’ll hopefully be giving the Edible Forest some much needed love and attention.  Last year the trees went to very wet and compacted soil and with our drainage problems and this year’s incessant rain they have had a tough time of it.  They are more trees and shrubs to go in, many which have been waiting in pots all year, but first we need to improve the soil conditions a little and Tim Foster will be showing us the way.
In December we’ll be cutting back our opening hours to 11am to 3pm.  We are closed on Boxing day and on the 19th we’ll just be open 12-2pm to observe the (nearly) shortest day at the winter equinox by eating cake and pottering around in the polytunnels,  I am not sure about opening on a Saturday in December as people are generally very busy but let me know if you think we should.

Harvest Festival report

October 8, 2012

So here’s what you’ve been waiting for….it’s the long awaited Harvest Festival report!

Number of people through the gate                                                   =362
Cash taken in total                                                                                 = £366.10
Cost of a hot drink                                                                                 = £1
Number of complaints about cost of hot drink                               = 2 (but one of them complained for quite loudly and repeatedly so it felt like more)
Number of free pieces of cake given to volunteers                          = 46
Number of gazebos/tents/yurts up on the day                                 = 5
Number of gazebos/tents/yurts that collapsed on volunteers       = 1
Number of morris dancers in attendance                                           = 8
Metres of bunting                                                                                    = 78m
Number of wheelie bins converted into water butts                        = 34
Number of musical acts rocking the Shed Stage                               = 3
Number of people who superglued their fingers together               = only 1!
All in all it was a lovely day. Thank you to everyone who came and ate cake and batted the rat and enjoyed the music and made harvest crowns and a special thank you to all the lovely volunteers who promised an hour and then stayed all day. Also if anyone wants to weigh in on the £1 for a cup of tea controversy please do! Is £1 too much!?!
I’ve attached some photos and tried to put a load up on the website but having a few problems. ANY one who has any understanding of wordpress websites and galleries – please get in touch!!
The festival was a timely good bye to summer as despite the recent sunshine this Wednesday definitely had an autumnal crispness to it.   We still have plenty of harvest coming in and it won’t stop.  We’ll be busy growing indoors over winter and will be on site every Wednesday rain or shine.  We’ve plenty of exciting projects in the pipeline and lots of work to do on our infrastructure, bed building, rainwater harvesting etc
I’ve just come back from learning how to grow oysters mushrooms in recycled coffee grounds.  An exciting winter project!  We have our first small bag inoculated and tucked up somewhere warm and we should have our first harvest in 5 weeks!  Potentially we’ll run a workshop making bags for people to take home like this   http://www.fungi-futures.co.uk/category/grow-kits/. Places will be really limited so let me know if it’s something you’d like to do.
And finally a big welcome to our two new arrivals – the gorgeous bench that Matt the volunteer made our of recycled wood that is given our pond a classy Westonbirt Arboretum feel, and Max the gorgeous little baby who just missed out on being born in the polytunnel! Congrats Nicola and Alistair!
See you in the garden,
Lucy

HARVEST FESTIVAL

September 4, 2012

 

 

 

Hi every one

Below is the flyer for the Harvest Festival which is only 11 days away!! Thanks Sheena leader of the p.u.p (Pick up a pencil) group.

Some more info not on the flyer is the ever popular Pip’s Jukebox made it back from the festival circuit alive and will be joining us back in the shed stage playing your requests through the day. The fabulous Pigsty Dancers will be doing their thing at 2pm and other music will be happening during the day.  Whooop!

The seed swap is a little early in the year but a really good chance to get some free seeds and/or offload lots of your old seeds so you don’t feel guilty about buying fresh in.  If you’ve saved any seeds this year then please bring along any spares.  We’ll also have info and advice about seed saving you can still do this year.

There’s still space to volunteer if you’ve some spare time on the day and please please please bake and donate cakes.  Last time the refreshment tent was a vision of paradise and I’m hoping for a repeat of that.

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Other allotment news is Lloyds sent along three bunches of hardworking volunteers last week and it. Was. Great.  The combined energies of 35 people who started all at once, happy to be off the office and blitzed the dirty jobs we’ve been avoiding/not able to do this wet summer was fantastic… AND they paid for the materials and have fundraised for us.  We now have hard standing path for pond and new poly tunnel AND the trenches have been dug for the new polytunnel. Thanks guys!!  Which means if the sun shines then we’ll have the  tunnel up tomorrow after 6 months of waiting.  I am so happy about this.

Also the harvest is piling up so come on down tomorrow…

See you in the garden

Lucy

 

2012-08-04 10.43.19

Well weren’t rushed off our feet on Saturday but that just meant the people that came spent time making some really stunning bins. AND it means we’ve got some left for the Harvest Festival on the 15th September. Hooray!! Check out these beauties-

 

Wheelie Bin Party and new logo

July 10, 2012

Hi everyone,
Thanks you for your logo votes, for the lovely feedback and for the amount of thought that went into some of the responses.
I had 40 replies (although a couple of them were to tell me I’d messed up the email and one to ask to be removed from the list.) and the winner is logo 2 by 19 votes to 11 votes. It was generally agreed to be clearer, a “more balanced design in aesthetic terms”  and less “confusing for the brain”.
So here is the new logo in action on the poster for the Wheelie Bin Party on 4th August.  Let me know if you’d like me to drop a copy off if you live near the allotment and could put it up in your window.  I’ve not managed to do a poster yet without a glaring spelling mistake so if anyone spots one please let me know as I’ll be printing them out tomorrow.
If you can help on the day that would be fantastic, it’d great if we had a cake stall (what event isn’t improved by a cake and a cup of tea??) so all and any cake and biscuit donations very welcome.  Also we’ll have lots of vinyl and templates for people to decorate the bins so it’d be great if any creative sorts to help with that on the day – it should be mess free and easy for kids to do as well.  Any help is also welcome in the run up as we need to drill holes in all the bins.

Monday evenings and Wednesday days are ticking along, we’ve the first baby chilli’s peeping through the plants in the poly tunnel and courgettes on their way outside, so I guess it must be summer.
See you in the garden,
Lucy

Monday nights are GO!!

June 26, 2012

Okay, the sun is almost shining, the allotment is only flooded a little bit… I declare this officially summer!!  Which means The Evening Sessions will be starting next week:

Monday 2nd July we’ll be open 5-7pm 

Where we’ll be working on the new polytunnel prep, watering, weeding and everyone can take home some lovely salad for their dinner.
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The next Saturday opening day is 7th July (10-2) and we’re still there every Wednesday (10-4) and having fun getting to know our little patch of soggy land.  The courgettes and tomatoes are looking a bit miserable but our cabbages are a joy to behold.  We’ve been scoffing peas and mange tout for the last few weeks and the slugs haven’t realy worked out where we are so we’ve got carrots and all sorts on the way.  Feel free to come along if you haven’t already or to pass on my details to anyone involved with community groups who might like to come for a visit or get involved
2012-06-20 13.39.07.jpg    2012-06-13 14.23.46.jpg
Also planned for the summer we’re planning on having a water butt bonanza, a fun Saturday where anyone can come and convert an old council wheelie bin into an effective water butt and get advice on installation as well as a chance to decorate your bins with long lasting, mess free vinyl designs.  Date to be confirmed
IMG00876-20120611-1303.jpgcool eh?
And if all that isn’t exciting enough we’ve set a date for the Harvest Festival for 15th September.  So please pop that in your dairies and if you know of any choirs or musicians who might like to sing/play/caper around and make the day special let me know.
See you in the garden,
Lucy

 

Get Growing Trail success!

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Hi everyone,

We opened last Saturday as part of the city-wide Get Growing Trail; sunshine, cakes, new faces, newts and installing new 4 brand spanking new cycle racks – what’s not to like!  We had a lovely time, I got sunburn and despite our fabulous cheap prices made a tidy £72.
Our next Saturday opening day will be Saturday 7th July 10-2pm.  By then the sun will be shining and our raised beds full of delicious veg.  Also after listening to those of you that work/are otherwise engaged on Wednesdays but still want a piece of the action I’m thinking we’ll start opening on Monday evenings 5-7pm.
This will be only during summer months for those who fancy some gentle beginning of the week gardening, salad harvesting, watering and lounging by the pond.  Let me know if that’s something you might be interested in.  I think it’ll be a nice way to ease into the week.  Children are welcome.  Onsite disabled parking is available – just let me know by email/phone/text that you’re coming and I’ll fully open gates at the end of Monk Road so you can drive on.  I’ll confirm the start date for those soon – but probably end of the month or when the rain stops!
Up and coming work this month is carrying on with the second poly tunnel saga, we’re hoping that’ll be up in the next few weeks and full of raised beds so we can sit back on sunny days to come with a slice of melon. We’re also carry on planting up the Bag Garden, working on the herb garden and of course general pottering and eating biscuits.  Our salad beds are going great guns and volunteers at the moment are rewarded with a delicious and beautiful bag of salad.  Broad beans are just round the corner so come and get involved!
See you down in garden
Lucy