December 20th 2012

Today we had our Christmas Buffet for volunteer gardeners, staff and trustees. We provided the stew and jacket potatoes (and salad from the garden) and everyone brought fabulous puddings, cakes and cheese to make it into a banquet! We enjoyed our meal (all 40 of us) and then had a quiz and pass the parcel with ukulele accompaniment!!

We have had a great four months since the garden opened and the green house and cold frames are full of plants! We have got the compost off to a good start and piloted lots of workshops. We have rows and rows of cabbages, beans, onions, garlic, peas and salads growing in the beds outside already, have established a produce table with steady sales and planned a programme for next year. Here's to 2013!

December 18th 2012

We have had a productive day today stringing the broad beans, tidying up the cabbages and putting down wool slug pellets, replanting the herb pots outside the cafe and harvesting salad crops for the cafe. In addition, one of our volunteers has used his wood turning skills to create some beautiful dibbers for us and another is progressing well with a full tree survey of our grounds including the orchard. This tree survey is part of his John Muir Award work and will lead to a fun & educational Tree Trail for visitors next year!

December 6th 2012

A group of students from Furness College came to help us today with barrowing compost into the vegetable beds, cutting out labels for provisions jars, painting labels for vegetable rows and sawing logs for sale! It was great to have their input and we hope they will come back again!

December 4th 2012

Hedge planting was the order of the day despite some wet weather! We are putting hedges around the bin area and composting bays which will make it look more attractive once they have grown - hawthorn and hornbeam.

Our volunteers have also been discussing the labeling and presentation of preserves made by our chef Rufino for sale.

29th November 2012

The orchard benefited from some weeding, top dressing and companion planting of mint today. It was a beautiful crisp sunny day and everyone enjoyed working outside even though it was cold! We also had an exceptionally young volunteer helping us to sweep leaves up to make some leaf mulch for the future!

We have also started to put out a table with produce on for the first time-we included decorations made from the garden, bird and bat boxes, shopping bags made from recycled textiles and bags of logs -see below. We hope this will develop into an income stream with plants and fruit and vegetables added to the table in the future.

27th November 2012

Our wall hanging for the new garden room was completed today! Lots of community group members have created a panel or taken photographs or embellished this hanging which looks great and explains what our "green" values are. The garden room is used by the gardener, the volunteer manager and all our volunteers for briefings, sociable tea breaks and training.

Also, today Sarah ran a workshop on "Making Decorations from the Garden" - 9 people attended and you can see some of the results below! We are hoping that making and selling decorations will provide an income stream for the garden.

November 22nd 2012

Sarah and I went to Manchester for a Local Food Share, Learn and Improve Event. This meant catching the 6.39 am train! When we arrived at Piccadilly Station the weather was better then expected so we enjoyed a walk along the Ashton Canal to Merci where the event was held. About 30 people attended from projects across the North West which were very varied -from a farm to bee keeping to cooking! The morning was spent looking at income generation and the afternoon discussing impact assessment -there were also lots of opportunties to chat to people! I spoke with Tracy from Food Link North West about raising our profile and marketing events next year and to Lorraine from Local Food about our PR responsibilities.Our journey home was eventful due to the floods in Cumbria but we got there in the end!!