Come one come all  to our Harvest Fair!  There will be apple pressing so bring apples if you have them and a 2l container to take juice away!  We have the fabulous Geoff demonstarting wood turning and selling his gorgeous wares.

We’ll have veg monster creation and pond dipping and giant games and the digging bed and a quiet sensory space and clay crafts for kids and MORE!!

As well as music from What the Folk?! Jez on guitar and singing from Heartwood Chorus.

And pizza fresh from the oven and tea and cake and all this while supporting our community garden!

Hi everyone

I hope you’re all having a great summer and have coped with the high temperatures and drought. We’ve definitely been feeling the heat in the garden and some Wednesdays have been too hot for our volunteers to get much done apart from sit in the shade and chat and try and stay hydrated! The garden is far too big for us to keep it all watered some lots of veg are smaller or later than normal but the volunteers have done heroic work keeping things looking great. A special shout out goes to weekend watering warriors who have kept our polytunnels watered and our seedlings alive.  Our melons, loofahs, cucumbers and tomatoes have been loving the weather!  And our new little pond has been both a joy to us it’s always full of life and a frequent drinking spot for birds, insects and -joy of joys!- we’ve even had a couple of frogs sheltering in the shade there.

Last winter we built replacement beds over in the old decking area (thanks Patrick!) and decided that a good use for them would be to grow food for Family Food Action at the Ardagh.  FFA is an innovative North Bristol charity working to mitigate and raise awareness of family food poverty. They collect donated food through a network of neighbourhood collectors (covering more than 50 streets). FFA volunteers then sort and deliver donations to 4 community organisations who work directly with families and children in areas of high deprivation.  If you’re local and don’t know about them then definitely look them up and see if your street is involved! We now collect surplus vegetables from the plotholders on our allotment site and we have had a really great response with piles of spuds, beans, green leaves and of course many many courgettes and marrows.  It’s not something that we’ve done before as their collection day is not on our volunteer day but with the current cost of living crisis it’s definitely feels like a time when if we can do more to help support folks who need it then we definitely should.

Hi everyone

THE SPRING FAIR!!! IT’S HERE!!! You’re no doubt already planning to come but if you need a bit of convincing let me what we have going on and the many many reasons that you should come and bring everyone you know.  And if you’re busy…. send along your friends and family and why not give next door a knock to make sure they’re coming as well?!

You can expect live music from not one but TWO choirs AND and morris dancing from the excellent Pigsty Morris AND music from the epic What the Folks?! As well as spellbinding tales told by our storyteller.  We’ve got helps of plants to sell at great prices including veg, flowers, herbs and house plants and our fabulous volunteers on hand to give some advice about how to grow them!

We’ve got heaps going on for kids (and the young at heart!) including pond dipping, origami, face painting, crown making and a massive junk drumming work shop – ALL FREE!! And also grown ups who fancy a bit of creativity you’ve not been forgotten – you can weave willow to make yourself a May crown or get involved with the ever fabulous Sheena Vallely’s art workshop to transform our shed!

Our site is wheelchair accessible, including the toilet and we’ll have a play worker in our lovely cool straw bale building making sure that there is a quiet space and sensory haven for anyone that would like it.

The entry price is tiered adults £4/£2, children £2/£1 or so dig deep if you can or just come along and pay what you can! And we don’t have a card machines so please bring cash and if you brought your own cup as well that’d be grand.

See you at the fair

Lucy

Lucy Mitchell
Community Project Worker
07506 905 394  ghcgarden@gmail.com

Hi everyone

Hope you’ve been having a lovely spring!  It’s a great time to be in the garden  We’ve some great dry Wednesdays, and the volunteers have got a lot done and everything is looking great.  The new raised beds the on farside are finished and fantastic, everything is getting planted out and lots has been fixed, tidied, painted, planted and labelled ready for the new season and ready to have YOU along to our Big Spring Fair next week!

It’s our first spring fair and big fundraiser in 3 years so I hope you can make it!  It’s  1pm-4pm Saturday 14th May and you can expect live music, choirs and morris dancing, loads of free activities for children AND grown ups, a lovely big plant sale, delicious pizza fresh from the oven and cakes and a great time.  There’ll be an indoor quiet sensory play space and our site and toilet are wheelchair accessible.  So please come along and tell your friends!

The entry price is tiered adults £4/£2, children £2/£1 or just come along and pay what you can! And we don’t have a card machines so please bring cash and if you brought your own cup as well that’d be grand.

And if you have any spare plants to donate – FAB! or if you can bake us a cake that’d be brilliant!  Or if you have any time to help on the day you’d be very very welcome. Just let me know 🙂

AND our new pond is an absolute beaut!  You can cone and admire it at the fair.  We are all in love with it – also so are all the local birds! On Tuesday I counted 7 in there at once from a fledgling blackbird to a long tail tit, all enjoying a flappy bath and a drink. Sometime the crows pop down for a good dunk  – in and out and up in a tree to shake off and have a good preen.  The tadpoles are long gone but hey ho – turns out the wildlife had a different plan.

See you in the garden!

Lucy

Lucy Mitchell
Community Project Worker
t: 07506 905 394  e: ghcgarden@gmail.com

Hi folks

I’ve got some exciting garden news – we are going ahead with our first event in aaaaggees!  We’ll  be having our ….

Bonfire and Fundraiser on Saturday 6th November 6-7:30pm!

And it’d would be great if you could come along!  We’ll be selling scrumptious cake and delicious samosas as well as mulled apple juice and cider.  And we will of course be in the perfect place to watch Bishop Rd School’s amazing firework display.  (Don’t worry, the lovely people over there  know that we run this little event alongside theirs and they don’t mind – in fact one of the organisers said they like knowing that we’re here over the hedge loving it!) 

This year will are selling tickets in advance and you can buy them HERE

This is so we can make sure we limit the number and give people plenty of space and also to answer concerns of parents who’ve  been turned away in previous years when we’ve filled up very quickly.  The tickets cost £1, 3, or  £5.  We really need to raise some money as we haven’t been able to have any events for so long!   so please dig deep and  buy the more expensive ticket if you can!  but we don’t want to turn anyone away due to lack of funds so ther are still £1 tickets available.

We’ll be selling hot drinks, mulled cider, samosas and cakes please bring cash as we can’t take cards.

If we haven’t sold out we will be selling tickets on the gate but check here on or facebook to make sure before you come along.

See you by the bonfire, under the night sky:)

Lucy

Lucy Mitchell
Community Project Worker
07506 905 394
ghcgarden@gmail.com

Hi everyone!
How are you all doing? This is always one of my favourite times of year, I’m always ready to see the back of winter and after the year we’ve had this year the green shoots and leaves of spring feel especially hopeful. The warmer weather and the longer days are lovely and this year I’ve more grateful than ever for the garden and all the folks that make it possible. So if that means you THANK YOU and a special thank you to the parents of our children groups who were able to be hugely patient with us waiting for refunds and have been fantastically generous with their support and really helped keep us going in a year when we lost nearly all our income.

The garden is busy bursting back into life, the birds are singing and the polytunnel is filling up with little seedlings. This is usually there time of year I start shouting about our Spring Fair.  We aren’t having one this year of course BUT we are aiming to have a socially distanced plant sale on Saturday 8th May (time to be confirmed but most likely 12-3).  We’ll have a lovely range of vegetable and flower seedlings  as well as herbs and lots of tough slug proof perennial flowers.  So if you haven’t got space at home or a sunny windowsill to get seeds going then don’t worry we’ve got you covered.  And if you haven’t got any growing space a plant is a lovely thing to give to a pal to have in a pot

All our kids’ things were cancelled over the winter lockdown but we’ll start back out toddler group tomorrow!  Our afterschool clubs opened when the school went back and it was GREAT to have the kids back.  We’ve had some really beautiful golden evenings full of hooning around screaming, laughing, finding newts, falling in the stream, baking cake, building a tree house, light fires and just having all the space and freedom and nooks and crannies of the garden for general good times.  I think I’ve enjoyed it as much as the kids.  And thank you to the lovely plotholders of the Horfield and District Allotments Association who’ve tolerate us shattering the peace three times a week, especially our extremely wonderful and tolerant nearby neighbours! And if you’ve got any overgrown kids tools, toys or dinosaurs with some life left in them  that you could donate for the toddler then please get in touch!

We aren’t yet back to running like we did before.  Our Wednesday volunteer days have been a couple of small groups of volunteers coming in and doing a fab job of getting all the essential work done..  Last week a volunteer told me “It’s really kept me going and even when I feel awful I’m always glad I came” .  And when will be able to open ‘properly’ again? I’m not sure.  We’ll take it slowly like we’ve done all year.  But if you’d like to volunteer please let me know your email address we’ll have new volunteers starting one or two at a time. This way we can keep an eye on our numbers and make sure it’s not too overwhelming and everyone still feels safe.

It’s been really hard operating behind locked gates and turning away people who’ve been off work/struggling/bored/lonely and lots of people who might have really benefitted from some garden time.  And if you are reading this and suffering the effects of long covid then please know we’ve always welcomed people with varying health and energy levels.  You don’t have to be fit and well or to be able to lug around a wheelbarrow to come here.  If you think you would like to get involved but would only be able to only come for short while and do a short and gentle sitting down job and then have a cup of tea then that’s fine! You wouldn’t have to commit to coming every week or staying all day and you could just come along when your health/energy levels and schedule allow it.  If you’re not sure just get in touch and I can tell you more about what we do.

See you in the garden, hopefully sometime soon!

Lucy

Lucy Mitchell
Community Project Worker
07506 905 394
ghcgarden@gmail.com

Hi folks

We are still closed due to the pandemic. Currently our toddler group and afterschool clubs are not running.  Within the guidelines we are able to carry on running our volunteer Wednesdays to support small groups of existing volunteers and to keep the garden ticking over but we can’t take any new volunteers at the moment.  If you’d like to get involved please get in touch and let me know your email address or phone number so I can let you know when we are able to open up more.

All the best

Lucy

07506 905 394

Hi folks

Another lockdown!?!  Until December 2nd?? Well maybe it’d be nice to have something outdoors and creative and wholesome to look forward to….how about Wreath making??  A friend told me that making plans this year was an act of hope so in that spirit we are planning two wreath making days on the 5th and 12th December!  No they might not happen but it’s nice to plan as if they will, and then accept it when they don’t.

These days are always some off my favourite of the year and I’ve thought long and hard about how to make sure it is safe to run them.  It’s been soooo popular in the past few years and over the years become a part of local families Christmas tradition… but 2020 is not the year for the usual merry scrum of folks so this year we will taking bookings and small groups of folks will be very spaced out.   The garden is huge so we can easily social distance and our ‘indoor’ spaces couldn’t be more well ventilated if we tried!  It will still be a fun and informal session and you’ll be shown how to weave a hoop out of willow and then decorate it with glorious winter foliage.  It should take about an hour (you will be booted out after 90 mins) and every wreath is unique and gorgeous.

Book HERE and come make something beautiful (hopefully)

If you have your own gloves, secateurs and scissors BRING THEM.   Dogs on leads are welcome and so are children.  We have put the price up to £15 this year -£10 was a bonkers cheap price!. Also as we are extremely limited on numbers on the day we are charging for extra people that are coming in.  Sorry!  This is the only event we’ve been able to run and so it’s an important fundraising activity for the garden.

And if lockdown continues all is not lost!  You can come and get your materials in a safe and distanced manner in the time slot that you book and then there will be an online tutorial.

And what about the rest of the garden?  Our parent and toddler group will be cancelled for the next four weeks but we’ve been lucky with some glorious Tuesday morning for our fab sessions last term.  Our afterschool club is OFSTED registered childcare so we’ll be continuing to provide that throughout lockdown as long as the schools are open.  This is the term when it gets dark whilst the children are in the garden, it’ll be cold but BRILLIANT and if I was 8 there would be nothing I’d like to be doing more than running round shrieking in the dark then having a hot chocolate by a fire.

See you in the garden (sometime)!
Lucy

Lucy Mitchell
Community Project Worker
07506 905 394 ghcgarden@gmail.com

Please note I work part time usually on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday, but only do admin on Mondays and Thursdays 

We’ve got a Facebook page with lots of pics and info on so come and be our FRIEND AND we’re on Twitter @ghcgarden (though we’re a little more quiet there)