KIDS ACTIVITIES ARE GO!

We’ve still got space on the August dates of our fabulous kids’ activity days!  Described as “The best holiday club ever” by Lewis Baker aged 9 our days are a unique mix of story telling, activities, games, silliness and pizza.  Kids can expect den building, blind fold walks, bow and arrow making and messing around with clay! This summer’s theme is the animals of Golden Hill so we’re inviting 6-12 year olds to welcome in their wild sides, have fun outdoors and eat pizza cooked in a giant frog!  Booking is essential so get in touch ghcgarden@gmail.com

Also check us out here in a lovely article by our local Lia

http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk/blog/community-gardening/

AND watch this video about the garden to be featured in the current @Bristol exhibition about food! Oooo mini helicopter-cam!

http://youtu.be/Li2G3aGF-XU

See you in the garden!

Lucy

Hi everyone,

It’s June! So that means we’ll be open this Saturday for the annual Get Growing Trail from 11-3!  And having our usual first-Saturday-of-the-month work day starting at 10.  We’ve promised the public cakes and plants so any and all cake donations would be gratefully received!  We’ve lots of lovely augergine, tomato and chillis  plants who’d like loving homes and there’ll also be tours, chats and pond dipping available…

More details of the city wide event here: http://biggreenweek.com/session/get-growing-garden-trail-2014/ – where it’s advertised with a lovely picture of our very own Dougie’s daughter and mum.

Also this Sunday the Bishopston Open Garden Event is taking place, always a good chance to have a nosey at some beautiful local gardens AND this year we’re one of their chosen causes so pop along if you get the chance.

Bishopston Garden Club

OPEN GARDENS

Sunday June 8th 2 – 5pm

Entrance donation £3.00, children free
(proceeds to the Golden Hill Community Garden and tree planting in Bishopston)

8 Egerton Road – 67 Egerton Road  – 98 Egerton Road

1 Arundel Court – 30 Berkeley Road

104 Egerton Rd – tea and cake *

Plants at St Bonaventure’s

(*proceeds to CAFOD)

Tickets and map available at all gardens

In other news the strawbale building has a roof that’s been covered in recycled carpet and planted up with sedum and the walls have started to be plastered with our very own Golden Hill Community Garden clay.  Amazing hard work from the building volunteers.

And of course our beloved garden is doing really well as well, our wonderful volunteers have done a great job of getting everything planted and looking lovely but there’s always more to do. The sun and rain have led to an explosion of growth!  A forest of peas! Beautiful beetroot! Luscious lettuce!  Weeds everywhere!  So there’s plenty to do and plenty to eat and if you can’t make it down on a Wednesday then pop in and say hello (and eat some lettuce) on Saturday we’d love to see you.

And finally a new term of the Golden Buds has kicked off and we’re packed to the rafters with badge-making, Old McDonald-singing, tadpole-hunting muddy faced tiddlers. Lovely.

See you in the garden!
Lucy

Big news people! The strawbale building is starting to look like… a building!

A massive thank you to the wonderful Nico and Jules and the fab volunteers! Carrying on undaunted in the rain they’re going great guns and aiming to have it done in time for our very own Diane’s birthday in late June!

​And the SPRING FAIR APPROACHES!! It’s this Saturday and we definitely need more volunteers! If you’ve got an hour spare and could help on the plant stall, cake stall or (wo)manning The Frog making pizzas then please please get in touch. You’ll get a free piece of cake for your efforts as well as the joy of being part of this lovely event. And any and all donated cakes would be extremely gratefully received. Your community garden needs you!

And if you can’t help out still please pop along! With friends! With family! With strangers off the street! Come one! come all for pizza and song! cake and brass music! We’ve got LOADS of plants for sale especially plenty of brassicas, a range of exciting squashes, herbs, lettuces, flowers etc. And there’s loads for kids to do and a raffle with a chance to win a veg garden.

And if you can’t make it well that’s okay… but please tell everyone you know to come!!

See you in the garden
Lucy
07506 905 394
ghcgarden@gmail.com

Hi everyone,

The Eco build is GO! Yup we’ve REALLY started now, drainage for the foundations put in and last Wednesday the garden was a hive of activity as our Wednesday regulars and some lovely new faces started stuffing the tires that will raise our floor off the ground. It was a great day! A huge omelette was shared, and glory be, suntan lotion was necessary!! Nico has also assembled a team of ace volunteers who are beavering away on other days.

Pretty exciting,eh? Wish you could get involved but can’t make it down on a Wednesday, eh?… No worries!! We’ll be doing the most exciting bit and raising the straw bale walls on the sunny weekend April 26th/27th 10-4 so come and get involved there’ll be food but bring more!

And the next big date for the diary is May 10th 1-4 our Big Spring Fair. Yup it’s that time again. Soooo people your community garden needs you!! This is our biggest fundraising event of the year please please volunteer to beforehand to put up posters, deliver flyers on your street, bake us a cake, donate plants. And come help on the day with set up or tidy up on the day, or give an hour doing something super fun on the day to make it special!! We’ll have a plant sale, cake stall, free kids activities’ – badge making, clay monster sculpting, pond dipping and facepainting and fabulous live music and fire up the frog for pizzas BUT only if you guys help make it happen!!

So if you’re happy to give a hour of time on the day AND get a free slice of cake for your trouble AND the warm glow of being part of one of lovely events. THEN LET ME KNOW!! Honestly an email that says you can help for an hour and you don’t mind what you do will make my day!!

See you in the garden!
Lucy
07506 905 394
ghcgarden@gmail.com

Well as of yesterday we are independent!  The original £88 000 of lottery money given to Horfield and District Allotment Association is all spent and after smashing all the targets set to us. We’ve exceeded our wildest dreams in terms of numbers and participation and wild schemes and have not just created a community garden but a fabulous community of gardeners!  We’ll now be looking for people who want to become members of the garden as per our new constitution with the proviso you have to want to come to our AGM in the summer and vote on stuff.  More about this next time.

And how was the first day on our own?…. LOVELY. We enjoyed a fantastic Golden Buds toddler session in the sunshine.   Then in the afternoon had a visit from one of our new Golden Groups – The Willows day care centre for adults with dementia. So we had folks from 18 months to over 80 years old enjoying the sun and getting their hands dirty.  I think that’s a happy and auspicious start to our new found independence!

AND I’m super excited say the eco build is GO! Our fabulous builder Nico was on site today getting it marked out and the digger is coming to dig the drainage trench the build will sit on, then we start filling tyres, then fast forward 8 weeks…. and we’ve got ourselves a beautiful straw bale build.  We’ll be working on it on Wednesdays and some weekends.  Whoop!

And there’s so much other great stuff going on as well!  We’ll be on site this Saturday 5th 10-2 where we’ll be reveling in the season! Katja will be showing people how to decorate eggs in the traditional German fashion and experimenting with natural dyes from 10-12 AND we’ll have a bonfire AND a Catalonian onion feast(!). Good Times.

This time last year we had no idea where we’d be now.  We could have been scaling back operations and becoming totally volunteer led instead we’re storming into the new season with metaphorical guns blazing! In the past month we’ve had about 40 people a week at our open volunteering days which is incredible. I don’t know of any project as little as ours that is so buzzing with people.  Thank you every one and here’s to plenty more years growing together!

See you in the egg-decorating-onion-eating-newt-watching-garden!

Lucy

P.S There’s still some spaces left on our Golden Adventure Days on the 8th and 15th.  6-12 years olds can expect to step into Sherwood forest spending the day with Robin Hood and his trust Badger friends, make bow and arrows, overcome adversity, thwart the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, and eat pizza.

Okay everyone it’s all go in the garden – so hold on to your hats!

Firstly the Golden Fun Adventure Days are back and Even. Better. Than. Ever!!  As if building dens, playing games, lighting fires, and generally whooping it up in the garden wasn’t enough!  This time me and the uber-creative Clare are inviting 6-12 years olds to come and live the story of Robin Hood. Yup that’s right – live the story!  At they enter the garden they will enter the story become outlaws – the Merry Mates- and the day of activities will be a fully immersive day, weaving storytelling with adventure, arts and activities.  Where else could they have so much fun, get such a work out for the imagination and eat such tasty pizza?!  8th and 15th April 10am-4pm £25 including snacks and lunch.  The days will be full of different activities so children can book onto one or both and places are limited to just 16!  Tell your friends!

 

Secondly here’s the poster for the FAB workshop me and Pete will be delivering on the 6th April.  Expect a entertaining day packed with clearing, growing and allotment tips and practical know how from our combined over 40 years of growing experience!   I’ve attached it below and if you could print it out and put it up on any notice boards at work that’s be brilliant and spread the word to any allotmenteers you might know in need of inspiration!

 

And…. drumroll…. we are starting the eco-build!! We’ve found our builder, the lovely Nico Smith from Red Kite Sustainable Construction and Arts.  It will be a gorgeous load bearing strawbale building with a single pitched green roof and suspended floor.   We’ll be building throughout April and May on our usual Wednesdays and we’ll have some big community days when we’ll be invited everyone to come and help us raise the walls.  And if you’d really like to get your teeth into the project see the attachment below about becoming an apprentice and committing 2 days a week throughout the project.

And we have just two weeks left of our initial lottery money. Then we have two months of Awards for All lottery money to spend on the eco build then we’re on our own.  But not quite!  Our fantastic fundraiser Clare has secured a £4500 grant from the John James Foundation.  Which is AMAZING!! It gives us breathing space and it means the garden can deliver a wider range of services than I dared hope for.  But we can’t expect such juicy windfalls every year, we can’t rest on our laurels and we’ll carry on full steam ahead with all our fundraising plans, money making scheme and investing in making ourselves financially sustainable.

And finally The Golden Buds continue to have a great time spotting newts, planting seeds, exploring the garden and getting really, really REALLY muddy.

So all in all it’s a wildly exciting time, I could never have predicted we’d be here when the garden opened two years ago. Thank you all for your support and there’s so much to do at the moment so come and plant some seeds!

See you in the garden!

Lucy

Well anyone who experienced the apocalyptic winds at last weekend won’t be too surprised that we were met with scenes of mild devastation in the garden yesterday. Our beautiful sign! the collective effort of so many! Blown down! Snapped clean off! 

Pete and Co soon had it back up, though slightly lower than before.  A test run by Jacob (pictured 6 foot 7 inches) showed it should still be tall enough (anyone 6 foot 9 and over and will be issued with a hardhat).  And while that was going on other hardy volunteers proved that chopping down brambles can be fun! 

So it’s our birthday this Saturday 1st Feb!  Two years old!  How time flies…  So if you’re free around lunch time please pop down and eat some soup and cake and warm yourself by the bonfire (pending howling gales/torrential rain we’ll light it noonish).  We’ll be 10 until 2.  This is traditionally the midpoint of winter, from here it’s just a short hop to spring!  We’d love to see you and talk about happy gardening days past and tell you all about our exciting plots and plans for the future. (party frocks optional).

Talking of the future we had a great volunteer meeting last week and the notes (thank you Kayja!) are uploaded on the website.  Lots of good chats and it’s great to know that we’ve built such a strong team of committed volunteers who are ready to step up as we enter a world post lottery-funding.

AND if you knew anyone who fancied coming along to our Golden Buds taster days get them to email me ASAP as we’ve only 3 spaces (out of 45!) left.  Very exciting.

See you in the garden
Lucy

Last week while still waiting for a ‘proper winter’ we’ve been beavering away in the garden. Dougie and Bob were in the pond last week (heroes!) clearing the reeds before the frogs move back in and get busy while the rest of us were busy weeding, tidying, sorting and still harvesting loads of tasty veg. There is a deep satisfaction at following a Guardian recipe but having even posher ingredients. “Really? Hugh Fearnly Wittingstall, only one type of kale? tsk tsk” I think, gazing upon our medley of colourful kales….