The Mile Cross community garden
Eventually it would be great for the local community to swap seeds and start to grow their own produce and flowers for free.
The Mile Cross community network decided that it would be great to grow free fruit and veg for local people in various places around the area. This idea is based on the town of Todmorden where this is already happening with great success Incredible Edible Todmorden
They realised that in order to get the ball rolling, this year, they needed to find a few places to give people the idea and to show them how they could get involved.
Together with help from people who live and work in the community, they found a couple of discarded pallets from a local industrial estate (NB pallets safe to use, not infused with toxic chemicals will show the markings DB, KD, EPAL or HT). They also sourced some other discarded wooden planks, used the left overs from a pond liner from which they had made a pond locally, and used drills, screws and nails provided by the community.
Photo credit: Abbey Wilkinson
A small group of people from the community, connected to the nearby Phoenix Centre, arranged a time to meet up to create a prototype pallet planter.
Luckily, the group had Kieran, a very handy person who lives locally, with carpentry skills. He told them what to do and the group followed his instructions. Aaron, another volunteer from the community helped, too and he had the best time!
The plants (strawberries, tomatoes, herbs, lavender, sweet peas and other good pollinator plants) and the peat-free compost was paid for by the local city councillor from one of her funds.
Photo credit: Abbey Wilkinson
The Wildlife Trusts
Have you grown your own food before?
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