The allotment was alive with families, creative activities, and cooking. This spread for the first time to include storytelling and walks in the woods.
We had lots of help from volunteers throughout and even some of the children who use the allotment did tours and helped with a few creepy crawlies, who visited our classroom for the day. These included scorpions, grubs, millipedes, tarantulas, giant snails and many did dare to hold them!
curry that was gone in moments, as it was so tasty! We also tried some Arabic coffee and children helped themselves to the ripe berries and currants found in abundance around the allotment.
What the hell is an outlawed vegetable? It’s a frequent question at the garden where we grow French beans, peas, tomatoes etc that are illegal to buy in the shops. Why illegal? Well under EU regulations each variety of vegetable seed has to be put on the National Seed List, and this costs money. As most of our seed companies are now owned by the big bio-tech companies trying to force genetically modified greens down our throats, they aren’t really bothered about a ‘Carnival’ lettuce that only flogs a few packets. Or ‘Champion of England’ which grows too tall for the mechanical pickers. And the supermarkets don’t want a tomato like ‘Tangella’, with beautiful soft orange skin, that would turn to mush on the long food mile journey of most supermarket food.
The British Isles has one of the richest garden heritages in the world. For years, scores of gardeners and smallholders have nurtured thousands of unique vegetable varieties. But in the last hundred years most of these varieties have all but disappeared. Thousands more are under threat from climate change, loss of habitat, invasive alien species and the desire for ‘perfect’ vegetables. Does it matter? The Heritage Library think so “Every variation and strain is remarkably different. Each with its own taste, growing habits, cultivation time and heritage. Just as we value the diversity of plant and animal species, we need to keep the gene pool of the plants we grow to eat as big as possible too. But it’s not just vegetable varieties that we are losing, but it’s the local history, culture, tradition and skills that go with them. Once the varieties are extinct, we will never be able to get the seed or heritage back.”
The Heritage Seed Library work around the EU regulations but getting people to join the library. They send us a catalogue and we order some seed. We also save seed from varieties that we like the taste of. But they don’t just taste good, some can look spectacular – such as the ‘Kent Blue’ Pea currently growing at the forest garden.
impressively crafted by our builder Russell, the Targeted Youth Support Team and volunteers. In just a few days a turf sofa was constructed from natural materials to provide a sturdy and comfortable viewing point of Moulsecoomb and beyond from the top of the allotment. The piecing together of the turf over its solid earth base was like a giant 3D jigsaw puzzle and Aiden tried on a grass beard, to the amusement of everybody. Once the grass was fitted and pinned down, the completed sculpture looked like a contemporary art piece worthy of the Tate Modern, but far more practical! Russell and his daughter were the first to test out the sofa, it was watered and left to take root, now camouflaged against the rest of a very green garden. We await the arrival of herbs and the thatching of the roundhouse to finally complete that area.
building that you can hear it humming from the allotment as we would peddle away for a few sparks! We were given an enthusiastic lesson about the history of the discovery of harnessed electricity and learnt how it all worked. The first question on from most was how long you would have to peddle power a kettle for a cup of tea! We look forward to his return to hopefully install some lights in the tree-house with some of the children from the local schools.
only recently been secured in place and tested out. Nothing else was taken from the site and it had been carefully removed so it could be sold on. The stove was made from recycled metal including old garden forks to add to its charm and relevance to our project. It had successfully made the shed cosy and comfortable for the few times we were able to use it during the cold working days. 
This made our shed almost complete, with a lick of paint and a few furnishings it would have been a home away from home, and meant we could finally put our classroom into action or hire it as a meeting venue for local groups. Alas, we shall now have to wait a little longer for the children and volunteers to have a warmer treehouse to perch in.
'My son Ruben in the wattle and daub round-house, which is still awaiting a proper roof, but the Co-op have just given us 870 to build a turf sofa and put in herb garden around it.
