GardenLend

My daily crawl of the Internet for gardening and garden-sharing schemes finally paid off today; two such schemes outside of GardenLend being launched - in Totnes and The United States of America.

Garden Swap
By Homegrown Evolution(Homegrown Evolution)
Urban gardens are not only fun; they support low-carbon food production, create economic development, inspire healthful eating, build community, create opporunities for education, address watershed health concerns, create productive …
Homegrown Evolution - http://www.homegrownevolution.com/

The Totnes Garden Share Scheme on the BBC
By Rob
Rather than waiting for allotments to be forthcoming, Garden Share is a great way of unlocking land for growers, especially when it is accompanied by the gardening training we are currently runnning. Garden Share is run by TTT with …
Transition Culture - http://transitionculture.org

At last, the penny is starting to drop and people are realising that in these increasingly financially straitened and environmentally perilous times that co-operation is the only sustainable way forward.

Please join GardenLend at http://find.GardenLend.co.uk and help both yourselves and your neighbours grow nutritional, quality foods locally.

The BBC have a video of the Totnes scheme on their site at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7668344.stm and the Totnes scheme is online at http://totnes.transitionnetwork.org/gardenshare/home

Now that we can truly said not to be lone voices in the gardening wilderness and that such schemes actually do work, why not join us?  Membership is free and the usual rules of posting apply - basically good manners and respect for each other.  We do also have a shop on the site for all your gardening needs.

Frustrated gardeners and garden owners - now is your chance to take the plunge and to help transform not only your lives but that of those around you and - in time - make for a better planet.

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“Want to grow your own organic fruit and veg but don’t have the time? Why not find a neighbour who longs to garden but doesn’t have the space? Tanis Taylor reports on the rise of garden-sharing schemes inThe Guardian Thursday September 4 2008” http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/04/ethicalliving.organics

Summary of article

The idea of garden-sharing began in cities, among people who wanted to grow fruit and vegetables to eat but didn’t have the time, space or confidence. Communal gardens cropped up, gardening groups emerged. Fritz Haeg created an edible estate in the front gardens of a Southwark tower block. Projects such as the Tavistock Garden Share Alliance and pilot schemes such as LandFit and Swapaplot paired up unused gardens with the green-fingered. People began to share support and tips at first, then labour, compost, watering duties and harvests. The GroFun (Growing Real Organic Food in Urban Neighbourhoods) project in Bristol encourages members to pitch in on each other’s gardens and, in exchange, can call an “action day” for help in their own garden. Rich Andersen and Valentina Cavallini, self-confessed plant killers, posted an email on the GroFun Yahoo message board for help with their garden. In London, where locals retain a cautious distrust of their neighbours and face greater space constraints, project Food Up Front concentrates on the front garden. “Some 47% of members had never grown food before,” says co-founder Sebastian Mayfield. One neighbour grows potatoes in another’s border; and every Monday and Thursday a group of Streatham volunteers work the garden of an arthritis sufferer - growing tomatoes, brassicas, salad greens such as chard and sorrel, potatoes, cabbage and runner beans, and sharing the crops.

What a relief to find that we are not lone voices in the (urbane) wilderness.  GardenLend.co.uk has been running since 2006, putting forward this very idea.  Now that the idea has been shown to actually work, why not join us and share the benefits?  Please visit http://find.gardenlend.co.uk/ucp.php?mode=register to register.

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