Greening Barton Hill!

This spring we launched our BS5 Summer Garden Kits project in response to conversations with local people about gardening, nature, and bringing more flowers and pollinators into our neighbourhoods (Funded by Friends of the Earth and ICE Locality Partnership).

Over the last year we have supported community gardening projects in parks and public spaces, but we found that spaces without a clear sense of ownership can be difficult to maintain in the long term. With the Summer Garden Kits, we wanted to support people to create and care for growing spaces in community gardens, and also right outside their own homes where they can be enjoyed by neighbours and passers-by.

We put together more than 50 Summer Garden Kits, each containing a tree, wildflower seeds, and a selection of herbs, flowers, vegetable plants and bulbs. Local people were invited to apply, with priority given to gardens and growing spaces that would be visible to others in the neighbourhood.

The response was fantastic. Over the past few weeks people from across BS5 have been collecting their kits. It has been wonderful meeting lots of new people as well as seeing some familiar faces along the way, and hearing about the variety of different ways the plants will be used. It’s great to hear how excited people are to get growing, and we have already received some positive feedback from participants.

‘All the plants are doing well but some have made a real difference as these were put in old planters that were just full of weeds and literal rubbish a few weeks ago. Definitely brightening up the place. Thanks again, great initiative.’

We have started to receive the first photos of newly planted gardens and containers, and we can’t wait to see how these spaces develop over the summer months. We look forward to seeing flowers bloom, pollinators thrive, and the project bring a little more colour and nature into our neighbourhood.

We currently run two weekly gardening sessions, and we also run sessions in local parks and public spaces. If you’d like to get involved or you’d like to talk about a local public space you’d like to green, contact Harriet :

 

garden kit 1