Story & photo:Green City Action
Green City Action (GCA) has had a busy summer this year. At the beginning of the summer, we held an Open Day, where we were able to introduce lots of new people to the allotment, as well as use our handmade pizza oven for the first time.
The day was a great success, with over fifty people attending and many more pizzas made and consumed! It was great to see people picking herbs from the allotment to add to the pizzas – the rosemary garlic bread was a strong favourite.
We have also had a number of new people joining in at the allotment (Thursday 10am-1pm) and in the women’s group (Wednesday 9.30am-12pm). It’s a lovely diverse mix of people, and we’ve been learning Swahili and Chinese names for plants and animals. Everyone’s worked really hard to grow fantastic produce, including loads of soft fruit – strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants and jostaberries.
As well as giving fruit away to volunteers and the Firvale foodbank, we froze a good number of kilos to use in the jam-making workshop on 17th September.
Esther, one of our new volunteers said “I like meeting people from across the world, learning about how to grow and care for plants, being high above the city and getting to enjoy the delicious produce!”
GCA staff, Saskia and Hazel, have also run food growing workshops at Firvale Food bank, enabling people to take home their own plants which will produce food. Strawberry, herb and potato planting workshops were much appreciated.
The toolbank was open all through the Summer too – with local people able to borrow DIY tools at reasonable rates; there’s currently a 2-for-1 offer (call for details). The toolbank is open Thursdays 12-2pm and Saturdays 10am-12pm in Abbeyfield Park House.
We always welcome new people to the project and are looking for more to be involved- whether on the allotments, as a volunteer at Toolbank or helping grow food at Firvale Foodbank.
Please get in touch on 0114 244 0353, volunteering@greencityaction.org.uk; or join our Facebook group – School for Veg – Green City Action or follow us on Twitter #greencityaction