Friday 28 June 2013

Friday 28th June 2013

Lindal Preschool children and parents visited yesterday and toured the garden with Sarah, our head gardener. They enjoyed tasting the salads and strawberries and having their photographs taken with our papier mache sheepdog!


It was also the birthdays of our trainee gardener Simon and Chris, one of our regular volunteers so we had birthday cake from the cafe!


Tuesday 25 June 2013

Tuesday 25th June 2013

Wonderful crops! Today we have been picking strawberries and elderflowers for our chef Rufino-to be made into strawberry pavlova and elderflower cordial!!



Monday 24 June 2013

Monday 24th June 2013

The Good Life Festival is now complete and we have had huge numbers of visitors over the last 10 days including many people this weekend as part of the Ulverston Open Gardens event! Lots of questions and interest and appreciation of what we are doing...thanks very much everyone!



Our demonstration back yard, which is coming on well, was of real interest to visitors as many of them only have small spaces to grow food in!

Sunday 23 June 2013

Trash to Treasure Exhibition

This is a “must see” for some really unusual recycling ideas. This exhibition was organised by Jean and she was helped with the display by Joan. Here she tells us a little about how she started out recycling.

“My interest in making old stuff into new stuff started in Africa in 1974 when I bought my first pair of car tyre sandals, known as "thousand milers". Cooking for 3 yrs in Kenya on an oven that Steve made out of two 5 gallon kerosene cans confirmed my enthusiasm.
Ever since I've been buying and making things from rubbish. This is now called 'upcycling" and is more popular than ever.
Many people from around the world and 10 locals contributed to the exhibition. 
I'm delighted that it's been nominated for a national award. It is in the Coach House til June 30th.”





























I was amazed by the creativity of the people that “upcycled” lots of different materials to create things like coasters, handbags and even clothes. 


Would love to hear if you have recycled any unusual things, it has certainly got me thinking about all the different ways we can “upcycle” our unwanted trash and turn it into treasure. 








Recycling Part 2

Q: What do old clothes, polystyrene boxes; silver foil and a shoe holder have in common?
A: Well believe it or not they are all being recycled at Ford Park, along with many others unusual items. 







Old clothes from a charity shop have been used to create the scarecrows.  The base was made from recycled wood and I love the wellies on this one. Which one is your favourite?













The silver foil is also used to scare away the birds and looks particular beautiful with the sun glinting off the foil. This idea is wonderfully simple to make with a branch and the foil cut into leave shapes and tied on loosely so they flutter in the breeze. 









 The polystyrene boxes were from the cafe and have been recycled as planters for carrots. They were sown in October and the polystyrene helps with insulation.










I think my favourite has to be the recycled shoe holder used as a wall planter, another easy idea to copy for your garden.












Lots of other things have been recycled too; the two display blackboards were adapted from a couple of old style gala game frames.










Some of the wooden guards protecting trees were also cut down slightly as the trees were getting bigger and these were used to make wooden planters.

 









If you have a wander round the garden, see if you can spot the tiles that have been recycled and used as edging around paths. Any containers that are donated are also used as planters.





I spoke to a couple of the volunteers to hear their views on recycling.

Paddy told me he had used some rocks and various other materials which then had numbers displayed on them to indicate the various trees on the  tree trail, and also to be careful about not adding certain weeds like dandelions to the compost heap as these still had the potential to spread more seeds.

Chris said he liked the idea of “reduce, reuse & recycle” and as you can see from the variety and volume of recycling it certainly works. For more info on this go to: Reduce, Reuse & Recycle