|
Green Spaces Project of the Month
April
2004 - Ryton Organic
Gardens near Coventry
Contact: Jowanna Lewis, tel. 024 7630
8209, or 0845 0641164
organicfoodforall@hydra.org.uk - www.hdra.org.uk
As more and more people become
concerned about what goes into their
food, especially those with children,
organic gardening – gardening
without the use of chemical fertilizers
or pesticides – is becoming
increasingly important to many people,
including Britain's many ethnic
communities, as a way to enjoy healthy
food without harming nature.
The Henry Doubleday Research
Association has been studying and
developing organic gardening techniques
since 1985. They have 3 organic show
gardens in England: Audley End organic
kitchen garden near Saffrom Walden in
Essex; Yalding historic garden near
Maidstone in Kent; and Ryton Organic
Gardens near Coventry in Warwickshire.
All are easily accessible by public
transport or by road and would make an
interesting day out for any community
group interested in gardening in an
environmentally friendly way.
• Yalding tells the history of
gardening in Britain as you walk through
an ancient
woodlands, medieval physic, knot and
paradise gardens and a 19th century
artisans plot, borders inspired by
Gertrude Jekyll's ideas, before reaching
a 1950s 'Dig for Victory' Allotment.
• Audley End, a Victorian kitchen
garden linked to a Jacobean house and run
in partnership with English Heritage,
supplies organic fruit and vegetables to
the very famous, very posh Dorchester
hotel and restaurant in London, rather
tending to support the image of organic
food as being affordable only by well off
people – an image which is now being
challenged.
• Ryton Organic Garden, the focus
of this case study, is the headquarters
of HDRA and a showcase for organic
gardening. As well as many fascinating
gardens, Ryton is home to the magnificent
Vegetable Kingdom, a vast collection of
historic seeds and display of vegetable
history. It's worth quoting at length
from their guidebook, to get an idea of
how relevant this is for ethnic
communities today:
“Britain has a wonderful heritage
of vegetable varieties that has grown and
evolved over the centuries. Successive
waves of visitors, immigrants and
returning explorers have brought
vegetable seeds with them. The Romans
introduced lettuce and garlic, for
example; in the 9th century,
Arabs and Jews brought cauliflowers and
aubergines, whilst the exploration of the
New World by Columbus paved the way for
the arrival of tomatoes, potatoes and
runner beans. This continues to the
present day with Afro Caribbean and Asian
immigrants bringing with them vegetables,
such as kalaloo, that they would have
grown back home. The role of The
Vegetable Kingdom is to highlight this
aspect of Britain's heritage and to show
how important vegetables are to our
health and well-being.”
Ryton Organic Gardens is home to the
Organic Food for All Project, or OFfA for
short.
As the name suggests, the idea is to
make tasty, healthy food affordable to
all by helping people to grow their own
vegetables really cheaply. OFfA will
provide training and support to socially
excluded groups who are not currently
growing their own produce, to get them
growing organically. Even if you have
very little space you can grow food
easily on an allotment, wasteland,
garden, balcony or window sill.
Volunteers will be recruited and trained
to act as mentors to novice organic
gardeners. OFfA will work with local
community groups, health workers,
councils and businesses to help everyone
get the most out of the project.
Potential groups are being identified
now, and ethnic community groups or
multicultural groups from all around the
UK are very welcome to get involved. 12
groups have so far signed up from Leeds,
Birmingham, Nuneaton, Yeovil, Watford,
Kingston, Redbridge, Waltham Forest and
the Isle of Wight. They are hoping to get
started growing food this summer. The
first mentor training will take place at
the end of June, and a second series of
training events is planned for the
Autumn.
Training will cover all key aspects of
organic growing including soil and what
grows where, crops and crop rotation,
what plants grow well together, spaces
for growing and what methods to use,
composting, seed saving, sowing,
harvesting, storing food and recipes. The
whole of Ryton Organic Gardens will be
used as a teaching resource, so trainees
will have a chance to see the herbs and
flower gardens, fruit trees and bushes,
the bee garden, paradise garden and so
on. But the main site for training will
be the demonstration allotment. Mentors
will be provided with a tool kit and
supplementary information to enable them
to support their groups. A hotline has
been established, offering fact sheets
and advice, to further support OFfA
volunteers.
More groups will be targeted next year
with a major advertising campaign, and
the project will run for three years
initially, hopefully much longer. Jowanna
Lewis, Project Co-ordinator, will be
promoting the project through HDRA
membership, as well as Centres for
Change, the sustainability centers
network, London 21, LA21 officers and the
Centre for Alternative Technology. OFfA
will also work with GPs as a way to reach
out to otherwise `hard to reach' groups.
Jowanna hopes that by advertising widely
the project will reach beyond the usual
WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant)
networks to include a more diverse
audience. She has identified a need to
translate fact sheets into community
languages and is looking for volunteer
translators.
The project is funded by donations
from HDRA members, and sponsorship from
KETTLE ® Organic potato chips, and is
seeking further funding and additional
partners.
top
 
Green Spaces |
Features
|
 |
