Sustainable Bristol

Inspiring people to Get Growing

Posted on 20 July 2011

What with the British weather being as it is, the glorious sunshine for Bristol’s first ever ‘arts trail for growing veg’ on June 11^th was surely a sign that the gods approved.

Forum for the Future helped to organise the Get Growing Trail, which aimed to celebrate local food growing projects, and to inspire more people to get involved with them. 23 community gardens opened on the day, offering visitors the chance to have a look around the site, meet garden members, get advice on growing and take part in lots of fun family activities.  A smallholding even slaughtered one of their prize pigs for a barbecue!  Another garden offered homemade elderflower champagne to visitors, and veg dug up on demand.  There were also cookery demos, plant sales, and seed planting courtesy of Garden Organic’s ‘One Pot Pledge’ campaign.

Overall, around 1000 people visited the gardens across Bristol, which was a great result for the first year of the trail.  The friendliness and enthusiasm of the garden members (plus the sunshine!) resulted in some fantastic feedback: over half of visitors said that they’d been inspired to start growing their own food by visiting a garden, and just under half said they were inspired to join a community gardening group.  The garden groups that took part were really positive about the day, saying that they really valued being part of a city wide event, and attracted lots of new members and volunteers.

Forum for the Future have produced a short report about the event which you can read here.

Inspiring children to get growing at Bramble Farm in south Bristol, one of the community gardens open on the Get Growing Trail 2011