GardenLend – rescuing neglected gardens

Transition Town Wimbledon are trying to make Wimbledon into a more sustainable community. They are having an event in the Piazza near Morrisons on Wimbledon Broadway on Saturday 20th March.  More details as they emerge.

See http://www.projectdirt.com/group/transitiontownwimbledon for further information

The idea to raise awareness of sustainable living and build local resilience in the near future to help deal with the twin threats of climate change and of “peak oil”. Communities are encouraged to seek out methods for reducing energy usage as well as increasing their own self reliance — a slogan of the movement is “Food feet, not food miles!”* Initiatives so far have included creating community gardens to grow food; business waste exchange, which seeks to match the waste of one industry with another industry that uses this waste; and even simply repairing old items rather than throwing them away.

Central to the Transition Town movement is the idea that a life without oil could in fact be far more enjoyable and fulfilling than the present “by shifting our mind-set we can actually recognise the coming post-cheap oil era as an opportunity rather than a threat, and design the future low carbon age to be thriving, resilient and abundant — somewhere much better to live than our current alienated consumer culture based on greed, war and the myth of perpetual growth.”

An essential aspect of Transition in many places, is that the outer work of transition needs to be matched by inner transition. That is in order to move down the energy descent pathways effectively we need to rebuild our relations with our selves, with each other and with the “natural” worlds. That requires focusing on the heart and soul of transition.

Echoes of both GardenLend and Leon Trotsky, I am pleased to note. **

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*  http://blog.gardenlend.co.uk/2009/07/12/teamgreenbritain-meet-teamgardenlend/

** http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/

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After a schism within the UK end of the freecycle network, due to the Amerigocentric nature of the organisation, many Freecycle groups have moved over to a new grouping, known as Freegle (“Free Giving, Locally and Easily”)

Although the name has changed, the groups’ purpose remains the same: keeping otherwise usable items from landfill and reducing the environmental impact of modern life on a venerable and vulnerable planet.

For more information, please visit http://www.ilovefreegle.org/

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“The government is consulting on how it can ensure that the UK’s food supply remains secure in the future.

While the current situation in the UK is good, ministers warn that factors such as climate change and population growth could have an adverse effect.

Producers, supermarkets and consumers are being encouraged to submit their ideas on how a secure food system in the UK should look in 2030.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8189549.stm

Surely, growing your own in your own space is probably the ideal?  If you don’t have a garden or easy access to years’ long waiting lists for allotments, why not join together with your neighbours and work together on a shared garden or even some unused piece of land – with the owner’s permission, of course.  That way, you can grow what you like within seasonal and climatic constraints and join a common goal (planetary survival) as well as getting some exercise and great healthy food into the bargain.

Please join us at http://find.gardenlend.co.uk or why not just ask your neighbour, friend, relative, local landowner if they would like some help with a plot that could be better put over to growing fruit and veg.  Left to any government to organise, we will all surely starve.

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Organic food is no healthier than ordinary food, a large independent review has concluded.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8174482.stm

It may have no more or fewer nutrients that the processed equivalents, but organically produced food has a lesser, if not positive, environmental impact and – especially if you GIY (grow it yourself) – converts the equation from “food miles” to “food feet”.

If you have not got your own garden to grow fruit and vegetables, why not ask your neighbour if you may share theirs?

What do our readers think?

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The announcement of the four areas to be the nascent Eco-Towns is, for may people, too little, too late and in the wrong place.  The upheaval, maladministration and bureaucracy involved makes the whole prospect quite unlikely to reap benefits for an appreciable period.  Then the results will be analysed, mulled over, reported upon, have money wasted in stated the bleeding obvious about, then reappraised with some potential further action along simlar lines, perhaps, maybe, sometime later.

These eco-towns are, for the most part, away from major centres of population and industry.  On most levels, it would never be noticeable if they were a success as they are effectively being measured in a void.  Unless fully sustainable, the additional impact of transport and provision of services, utilities and goods may well wipe out any benefits accrued.

Why not start nearer to home, if not at home itself?  Most people live in cities; the most populous in the UK being London; the same will apply to all conurbations.  Why not change food miles to food feet by growing your own food.  Your garden would be a starting point; failing that, an allotment.  With the scarcity of municipal land available, why not volunteer to use some council, church or state-owned space that has gone to wrack and ruin?  The LandShare scheme started after GardenLend approached Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to help promote our garden-sharing and home-grown food and flowers message.  The best systems seem to be ones organised on a face-to-face basis, on a local level – how local do you want?  Miles from anywhere?

Have a scout along the road where you live – has someone got a garden that really could do with a make-over?  Offer to help out; it will brighten up the area and help someone else, as well as providing a healthy outlet for pent-up energy – much more fruitful and cheaper than a session at the Gym.  The owner could guide you as to what their dream garden might be, or perhaps you could volunteer a few ideas of your own.  The social benefits, along with the more obvious health and environmental ones, are potentially enormous.  Why not help your neighbour? Just be prepared to lend a hand.

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The Government is due to announce the locations of a series of environmentally-friendly new towns, with just a few of the shortlisted “eco-town” sites expected to get the go-ahead.

The once-flagship project was intended to meet housing needs and tackle climate change, with as many as 10 settlements built by 2020.

But the scheme has been dogged by controversy and opposition from the Tories, countryside campaigners and local communities, with opponents mounting legal challenges to the selection process.

Just three or four of the 11 remaining proposals on the shortlist are expected to get the nod, including Rackheath, Norfolk, the only site to get the top A rating in an assessment of their sustainability for the Government last year.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090716/tuk-locations-of-eco-towns-to-be-named-6323e80.html

Rather than wait for the Government to extract its head from a dark place, why not set up eco-communities closer to home, starting with one’s own garden?  If you don’t have a garden, or are unable to manage the one that you have, why not get in touch with someone nearby to help out?

Join GardenLend & post a message,; use your local library or church noticeboard if you wish, or even LandShare if you really must; just get involved, planting, growing and reducing wastage of resources and opportunities.  Now is the chance to change food miles into “food feet”

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Counting your food miles

What’s the real environmental impact of your weekly shop? Caspar van Vark reveals the truth about food miles.

An obsession with locally sourced food is sweeping the nation. Restaurant menus boast of the local provenance of their ingredients, while TV chefs remind us that British is best. If we buy a pack of mange tout from Kenya, we do so with a vague sense of shame.

The environmental impact of food miles is now a big issue for shoppers and supermarkets. On the surface, it seems simple.– buying apples from Dorset must be better for the planet than transporting them all the way from New Zealand.

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=101544638307&h=9PmLk&u=wCrMl&ref=mf

Counting your food feet

Why not turn over your garden – or your neighbour’s garden if you don’t have one of your own – to food production? Negligible food miles, plus social, health & environmental benefits all round!

More at http://find.GardenLend.co.uk

“food feet” is possibly hereby used for the first time to illustrate the possibility of growing food in your garden or in one nearby and its authorship is claimed by Ian Springham for and on behalf of GardenLend.co.uk

Any questions, drop us a line: info@gardenlend.co.uk

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My allotment borders on two others that are archetypal “modern” allotments – raised beds with wooden borders, bark paths – devoted almost obsessionally with neat and tidy vegetable production.  No weed, wild flower, nettle or bramble, dares raise its ugly head.

I find this quite disturbing.  My allotment is run on a much freer basis.  I have fallow beds every year where wild grasses and flowers grow, and I have a border-come-hedgerow of brambles and nettles.  I consistently have better crops than my neighbours, and my wilderness sections are alive with bees, birds and insects, busy getting on with their lives alongside mine.

I’ve had two warnings about my “unruliness” from the council, but, considering the fragile ecosystem we’re all trying to maintain as responsible inhabitors of this planet, I feel I’m doing the right thing, because, without our widlife colleagues, we’d have sparse pickings in the food department and a lot more pests to battle against.  I’d be interested to hear what other allotment holders think on the subject.

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Which is nice and shows our monarch ‘mucking in’ to some degree – which can only be a good thing.

This does raise the question for us lesser folk who do not have a spare palace or castle to turn over to the land: what can we do?

Following Her Majesty’s example, looking out directly around our various estates, there is quite a bit of green space that is not really doing anything, not even just looking pretty and providing relaxation and solace – ripe for agricultural development.  Step 2 is the really cunning bit: if it is not in your gift to just march in and plant whatever you like, just ask the owner or person entrusted with looking after the said plot if it would be alright to plant some fruit & veg, tend the land and share in the bounty.

This has been the ethos set forth by GardenLend since its inception in 2006: keep it local, personal and sustainable.  If you are still stuck for somewhere to plant, tend and till, then why not join GardenLend and post a message on the boards saying for what you are looking and where you are based?  Similarly, should you have the odd county, field or patch of garden that could do with becoming more productive, why not sign up and post your request for serfs to till the land frustrated gardeners to transform it into a horticultural Paradise?

You will help save the planet, save yourselves a fortune and follow a Royal example.  What could be better?

Full story at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8098799.stm

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