Keep the weekend of 17th – 18th Sept free because, once again, Alive’s Community Gardens are taking part in this year’s Get Growing Trail, organised by Bristol Food Network, the organisation behind the city’s successful bid to become a Gold Sustainable Food City in 2020.
The Get Growing Trail is an annual celebration of some of Bristol’s vibrant, productive (and often secret) fruit and veg gardens. As part of the trail, the general public is invited to explore a host of green spaces, including community allotments, gardens and orchards, smallholdings and mini-plots, city farms and productive parks.
Alive has been part of the Get Growing Trail for a few years now, but this is the first time two of our green spaces will be opening their doors on the same weekend! These are our dementia-friendly allotment in Brentry and our newest endeavour, our inclusive community garden at the Wellspring Settlement in Barton Hill.
The Wellspring Settlement garden is a coproduction with the Settlement itself and only launched in March this year, so it’ll be our first opportunity to showcase all the hard work that the local community and visitors to the settlement have achieved in a really short space of time. In a relatively short space of time, what was once an urban landscape has been transformed into a colourful abundance of flowers, fruit and veg. There will be an opportunity to meet some of the people who’ve helped effect the change there and find out what the garden means to them. We’ll also be inviting people to make origami seed packets to take home filled with seeds for flowers and veg!
Our award-winning dementia-friendly allotment in Brentry took part in last year’s GGT trail, when we made many new friends on the day. We’re looking forward to welcoming back visitors to show them how much hard work our amazing participants have put into the area over the year, and to challenge stereoptypes as to what people living with dementia are capable off. It’ll also be a unique opportunity to visit a usually private space and hear more about the work the charity does running therapeutic horticulture sessions across the region. We will probably also take the opportunity to bend your ears about our passion for community-growing projects!
We look forward to seeing you there!
The Get Growing Trail is taking place across over 30 locations this year. For more information visit https://www.bristolfoodnetwork.org/blog/get-growing-garden-trail.