Seeds of inspiration – its Bristol’s veg trail!
Posted on 15 April 2011
Bristol's first 'Get Growing Open Garden Day' will be held on Saturday, June 11 as part of a campaign led by the Bristol Food Network.
Bristol is already well-known for its community art trails and now the gardening equivalent is set to be launched in the city this June. Suzanne Savill finds out more in this story that originally appeared in the Bristol Evening Post.
As food prices continue to rise, more people are becoming interested in growing their own food. With that in mind, a new event is being launched in Bristol aimed at getting people to start cultivating their own fruit and vegetables.
The Get Growing Open Garden Day is being organised by the Bristol Food Network, the Permaculture Association, and the UK sustainable development charity Forum for the Future, and will feature urban food growing projects in the Bristol area – as well as a detailed map featuring inspiring plots.
These will include an organic community orchard in Horfield, a not-for-profit organic gardening club called Buried Treasure in Knowle, a community allotment in St Paul’s, a local gardening project created from derelict land in Easton, a community health and food initiative in Hartcliffe, and a chilli club in Clifton.
Paul Rainger, head of the Sustainable Bristol City Region Project for Forum for the Future, said: “It will be a grand ‘open day’ of about 40 city wide food-growing projects, encouraging more people to get involved with urban veg production – a sort of ‘arts trail’ for vegetable growing!”
Laurence Copleston of Forum for the Future adds: “This will bring together Bristol’s growing groups for the first time, putting their details on to one easy-to-use map, and making it simple for people to find peaceful city sanctuaries and social garden spaces right on their doorstep.”
The Get Growing Open Garden Day map – which will be available online and in print – will show the diverse range of growing projects across Bristol, with different icons for city farms, community orchards and gardens and community supported agriculture projects.
It will be accompanied by a guide called Bite into Bristol, to help people volunteer their time and get involved for themselves.
Laurence explains: “With more and more people interested in growing their own fruit and veg, we wanted to create an event that would help to promote Bristol’s urban growing projects.
“We want it to become an annual celebration, inspiring people to get involved with growing and having a go for themselves.
“By running the Open Garden trail, we hope to raise awareness of Bristol’s vast food-growing potential.
“We hope that this will help kick-start our vision of transforming the Bristol city and region into the UK’s sustainable food capital.”
In addition to being an opportunity to view growing projects around Bristol, the Open Garden trail will also feature free activities ranging from music and art to guided tours and wildlife hunts for children.
The Get Growing Open Garden Day will be held on Saturday, June 11, and is part of a campaign led by the Bristol Food Network to encourage more people to get involved with urban vegetable production and to promote alternatives to traditional allotment growing.
Full details of all the venues open for the trail will be available from early May, when the promotional guide and map will be released online and in pr int. Or for further information on Get Growing Open Garden Day, visit the Bristol Local Food website.
The Get Growing Trail is part of Bristol’s Good Living Week (10th – 19th June), a new festival that aims to inspire people to live and work more sustainably. The week includes the chance to visit houses with solar and other renewable energy installed and a major exhibition of sustainable living, making its first appearance outside London. Popular established events like the Festival of Nature, a public celebration of biodiversity and Bristol’s Biggest Bike Ride, a mass cycling event add to the action-packed Week.
2 responses to Seeds of inspiration – its Bristol’s veg trail!
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This was a wonderful day made successful in part by glorious sunny weather. However, the Get Growing Trail covered a vast area of the city, with many opportunities to visit community gardens, orchards and the like. It was impossible to visit them all. I was keen to get advice on how to manage our local orchard which is on our allotment site and did not have time to squeeze it all into one day.
When do you start making plans for next year?
Our local Community Farm was on the list of places open, but it would be good to also promote the other things that are going on in Lawrence Weston.
Glad you enjoyed it. Yes is was lovely in the sunshine.
The Bristol Food Network will hold a bit of a review and analysis of how this first day went, but hopefully it will be run again next year.
Keep an eye on the free emailed ‘Bristol Local Food Update’ newsletter for news of this and all the other growing event news around the city.
You can sign up to get it on the http://www.bristollocalfood.co.uk website.