Green Capital Gardening Blog: Part 5 (Edible Parks)

This is your guide to all things gardening related throughout the Green Capital year. Each month our resident blogger will share tips on how to get started with food growing, and where to find projects and community gardens in your area. You'll discover that gardening isn’t just a summer time hobby but something that can be done 52 weeks of the year!

Here in Bristol we are lucky. There are parks in every corner of the city, and in most cases they are not only well looked after, but also they are well used.

They differ greatly across the city too.

parks are ripe for projects that see community groups working together to grow food in various ways

Some, like Castle Park, are used mainly for people to have their lunch in or walk through on their way to and from work.

Some such as Victoria Park, have large sweeps of grass and so are popular with dog walkers and families to use and a few are tiny and are used mainly for children to be able to get out into and play, such as Dalrymple Park.

They are all amazing.

But some parks are now using part of their spaces in a new way which is exciting and great for their communities.

Food growing in parks has proven to be controversial in some cases but none the less there are parks all across the city that are seeing food growing in them in various ways.

What is clear, however, is that parks are ripe for projects that see community groups working together to grow food in various ways, making parks more diverse places and encouraging a conversation around food growing and how we use the parks in our city.

St George’s Park has a community food growing project in raised beds that sit around the edge of the old bandstand.

The beds are always full of crops and they have a great traffic lights system so people know when the food is ready to be harvested.

Mostly they grow annuals like carrots, beans and lettuces but there are also strawberries and all the crops are beautifully grown.

The edible garden adds a new dimension to the park and is an excellent use of space that would otherwise be unused.

At The Armagh on Horfield Common a new garden is being worked on by a community group this year.

The beds are old rose beds that were looking sad and not a little sorry so the roses were removed and reappropriated and the beds filled with well rotted manure ready to be planted up with food in the spring.

Already there is a Honeyberry and a blackcurrant in place as well as an early planting of broad beans.

This project came about through the Friends of Horfield Common and Incredible Edible Bristol are very excited to be supporting it.

Meanwhile in Dame Emily Park the old community garden is being turned over to edibles in another project being supported by Incredible Edible Bristol which will see an entire edible garden at the top end of the park, with two enormous beds planned, one of fruit and the other of herbs and vegetables.

In St Pauls, St Agnes Park also has a raised bed project where there are lots of perennial vegetables, herbs and fruit planted in beds that were built as part of a community project.

If you’d like to get in touch with any of these projects get in touch with us at Incredible Edible Bristol and we’ll put you in touch.

It’d be great to see 2015 be the year that more edible parks projects were started.