Tag: Bowbrook Allotment Community

A Vintage Tea Party – Bowbrook Allotment Community

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 10, 2017
1 Comment on A Vintage Tea Party – Bowbrook Allotment Community

The second post about nostalgia is all about a day back in the summer.

We decided to try something new for our 2016 summer celebrations at our allotment site, Bowbrook Allotment Community – a vintage tea party. Jude and Liz worked hard planning and preparing for the event, ensuring we had plenty to eat and drink, the children had activities and making sure everyone knew what was going on.

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So our members donated lots of fancy home-made cakes especially little buns and fairy cakes which looked so colourful and of course tasty when our tea ladies, the Tea Bags, set them out ready for all to enjoy.

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We always cut flowers from around the site’s communal gardens to use to create table centre decorations and they always add so much to any event.

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We asked members to come dressed in vintage clothes and they rose to the challenge, which added greatly to the atmosphere. Even the Tea Bags dressed in vintage styled pinafores.

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We bought traditional lawn games for the children to enjoy. Many of these games were new to them but they were all enjoyed. It was good to hear so much children’s laughter as they skipped away, wooden blocks tumbled down as they played Tenga and quoits were thrown over targets.

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Once we launched into the tea party lots of our allotment community gardeners came along with friends and family, enjoying the chance to get together, catch up and chat in an informal atmosphere. A great time was had by all! Music from the 40’s added to the atmosphere with Glen Miller being a favourite.

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We had a few other surprises in store too, an old grey Massey Fergusson tractor, an oil engine, and my collection of vintage garden tools.

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The Vintage Tea Party proved to be a very popular event and we have had lots of requests to make it an annual event at our allotments, Bowbrook Allotment Community. For more information about our allotment community visit our website, http://www.bowbrookallotments.co. uk .

Tags allotments, Bowbrook Allotment Community, Bowbrook Allotments, cakes, communal gardens, community, community gardening, community spirit, Massey Fergusson, old tractor, tea party, vintage, vintage tea party

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Spring Bulbs at Bowbrook Allotment Society.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date March 2, 2016
3 Comments on Spring Bulbs at Bowbrook Allotment Society.

We spent a day on our plot at our allotments, Bowbrook Allotment Society, on the first day of March. It was cold and the wind strong and added extra coldness. But the sight of cheerful bulbs growing close to our plot helped cheer us up.

I hope you enjoy the photos I took with my smartphone. They are growing in the meadows under the trees in one of our orchards.

Tags Bowbrook Allotment Community, communal gardens, community, community gardening, spring blossom, spring bulbs, spring flowers

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More Awards for Bowbrook Allotment Community

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date February 12, 2016
5 Comments on More Awards for Bowbrook Allotment Community

There is nothing better on cold dull days of winter than looking back.

When the RHS gave us our first award we jokingly started calling ourselves an “Award Winning Allotments” and then as we get more and more we now call ourselves the “Multi-Award Winning Allotments”. Well last year in the autumn we were invited to another award ceremony jointly held by the RHS and Britain in bloom.

We enjoy these ceremonies as it affords us the opportunity to meet gardeners from other community gardens and see what they are getting up to. This year the ceremony was held in a hotel with well-laid out gardens too so we enjoyed a wander before our lunch.

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Our allotment gardens, Bowbrook Allotment Community, affectionately know as BAC, fall under the RHS Its your Neighbourhood Scheme for community gardens that improve their local areas. We are measured against a set of criteria which consider horticultural excellence, environmental enhancement, wildlife friendliness and community involvement. Assessors from the RHS make visits and spend several hours on site marking us against set guidelines. The awards are awarded at 5 levels starting with beginning at Level 1 moving up to Level 5 Outstanding. They can also give out discretionary awards to individuals and community gardeners.

We were pleased to receive a Level 5 Outstanding Certificate in 2015 for the 5th year running. We were totally surprised when we were called up at the end of the award ceremony to be be awarded an RHS National Award of Distinction, one of only two awarded. We were given this as we had achieved a mark of 100% in every category. Can’t be bad! It truly reflects our great community spirit!

I thought it would be interesting to add photos of the banners displayed in the hall as they give clues to the spirit of this award scheme.

Tags awards, Bowbrook Allotment Community, communal gardens, community, community gardening, community spirit

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New Toys for our Allotment Site

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date December 4, 2015
1 Comment on New Toys for our Allotment Site

It is always exciting to get new equipment for our community allotments, Bowbrook Allotment Community (BAC), but when we get three close together, two of which are real boys’ (and girls’) toys then it really is extra exciting. You will notice as this post moves forward that the girls mix it with the boys at BAC however tough the tasks.

Our first new toy, or should I say piece of equipment, was an attachment for our Ryobi strimmers which allows us to prune thick branches, a bit like a mini-chainsaw. The second was a mighty petrol-driven chipper/shredder, and the third a pair of wooden raised vegetable trugs. Jude and I give talks to garden groups and together with other committee members provide “Walk and Talk” sessions for groups at the allotment. With the fees we charge we manage to buy extras for the site. Using some of this money together with a generous grant from our local town councillor we were able to acquire these helpful machines.

We were so excited when the huge box arrived with our big red toy inside. Michael soon got to work breaking the box open.

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We quickly set about deciphering the instructions and putting all the extra bits and pieces together.

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Once all put together and filled with fuel we wheeled the red chipper all the way up the big grass path to the mature trees around our picnic area, where a mighty big pile of prunings awaited chipping. We had produced the pile of prunings when we used our other toy, the Ryobi pruning attachment.

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We have a policy at Bowbrook Allotment Community of following the 3-Rs, reuse, reduce and recycle. A key element of this is keeping as much green waste as possible on site where we can use it again. Thus all the cut branches from tree work and shrub pruning are now going into our new shredder.

Jude the Undergardener piled the shreddings into a wheelbarrow and wheeled them off to the Winter Garden where they gave us a fresh soft pathway.

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Our 3-Rs policy also meant that we recycled the cardboard from the box that the big red chipper arrived in. Sherlie tore it all up into pieces and mixed it with grass cuttings and this will produce quality compost for using as a mulch on our communal borders.

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Earlier on while Mike, Pete and I were unpacking and putting the new chipper together Jude and Sherlie got out the tools and put together our two new wooden raised trugs.

Quite soon after the big red chipper was rolled out again as we began our hedge cutting season.We chose an extremely wet and windy day but everyone had lots of fun fortified throughout by soup and cake provided by the committee and served up by our tea committee, “The Tea Bags”.

To discover more about BAC please check out our website http://www.bowbrookallotments.co.uk

Tags Bowbrook Allotment Community, communal gardens, community gardening, community spirit

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Celebrating Autumn at the Allotment

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 11, 2015
2 Comments on Celebrating Autumn at the Allotment

As many of you will already know we celebrate every season at our allotments, Bowbrook Allotment Community, so recently it was the turn of Autumn which we linked with Halloween. We want to make children aware of the seasons, how each is different, how they are part of a cycle and we want to emphasize seasonality. This is easy on an allotment site where we harvest fresh fruit and veg all year round . It is also the time of year when we cut our wildflower meadows. This is a job done by families or small groups and once they are cut it takes a while to get used to their short hair cuts. We are sowing the semi-parasitic wildflower, Yellow Rattle, in some of our meadows. This useful little plant is an attractive yellow flowered native plant which parasitises on the roots of the tougher species of grasses which means there is less competition for our wild flowers.

At our Autumn Celebration we invited members to take part in a competition to decorate their sheds following the theme of Halloween. Our judge enjoyed the experience even though it was a long job.

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One couple and their daughter decorated their plot and spread the ghosts across into the nearby tree. It looked great!

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Our tea committee were in attendance providing hot drinks and cakes. They even decorated their tea shop. One of the committee, Tracy, made toffee apples using apples from our community orchards. These proved most popular. Once it got dark we lit the barbeque and we all cooked our food on it We also lit our fire pits so we had the inviting aromas of wood smoke and BBQ cooking.

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This year we decided to invite everyone, children and adults to dress up in appropriate gear. Jude and I joined in as a witch and Dracula which upset some of the youngest children who didn’t like us looking like that. The first picture below shows us in our costumes.

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We held a competition for carved pumpkin lanterns and both children and adults took part. Liz, a committee member, organised fun games for the youngsters, which as always were very popular and played with the sound of laughter.

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When Darkness fell we lit the lamps, lit the candles in the pumpkin lanterns and took off for a walk around the site with the lit pumpkin lanterns to show the way. The children loved walking in the dark with their lanterns and visiting all the spooky sheds lit up. Some adults stayed to enjoy coffees around the fire pits.

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And a great time was had by all! Lots of members during the evening asked when our next celebration was. It will be our Winter/Christmas Celebrations. That will be a future post.

Tags autumn, Bowbrook Allotment Community, celebrations, comm, communal gardens, community, community gardening, garden sheds, Halloween, sheds

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Allotments on Show

This summer we were contacted by the organisers of the Shrewsbury Flower Show to see if we could put on a display about the work our allotment community does with children. There is a marquee at the show called the Futures Marquee and we were allocated some space in this marquee to illustrate how we work with the youngsters at Bowbrook Allotment Community to encourage them to become the gardeners of the future, the wildlife lovers of the future and ultimately the wildlife gardeners of the future.

But to give a full picture we need to go back a few days to a wet morning on the allotments when we met with some families and committee members to put together some insect hotels and wildlife shelters and pot on some tree seedlings the youngsters had sown 2 years ago. The pots we were using had also been painted by the youngsters. We had great fun! And dirty hands!

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We had a message from the show organisers informing us that our tables and screens were all up ready for us to be creative and put up our display, so imagine our despair when we walked in the marquee to find nothing in place and a huge dividing wall cutting through our space. We had a pile of tables and some some broken and the others the wrong size!

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So we set to work getting help from the marquee erectors and a very helpful steward. We found enough screens, we put up our tables and even got the dividing screen moved.

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Once we had sorted the problems out we could at last get creative. We arranged our 3 trestle tables and display screens in the design we wanted and unloaded the vehicles. There looked so much to do! We covered the table tops with black paper to give a uniform look …….

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….. and started pulling it all together.

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Frequent coffee breaks were essential!

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On the back side of the long run of screens we created a photographic journey around our Interest Trail.

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After a few very busy hours it all came together and we were pretty pleased with it. Our display illustrated how we encourage the children of Bowbrook Allotment Community to engage with wildlife and to discover the joys of gardening. It showed how we help develop the gardeners of the future, and ultimately the wildlife gardeners of the future.

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We featured mini-meadows our youngsters had grown in terra-cotta pots and insect shelters and hotels they had made.

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We left the show site to return 3 days later to meet the public and talk about our work with children at our allotments. This is the display as we arrived ready for the show.

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Day one was extremely wet so quiet at the show but day two was brighter and busy all day. We went home with sore throats and aching legs.

Tags allotments, Bowbrook Allotment Community, children in gardening, communal gardens, community gardening, Shrewsbury

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Our Allotment Open Day

The highlight of our allotment year is our open day. This is the fifth year in a row that we have opened Bowbrook Allotment Community under the auspices of the National Gardens Scheme as one of the lucky gardens appearing in their famous Yellow Book. We enjoy letting anyone who wishes to visit our community gardens come to see what we get up to.

The day began at 8:30 am when some of our young families toured our wildlife areas with members of the Shropshire Wildlife Trust and the Shropshire Mammal Society who had set live mammal traps the evening before. We periodically link with the trust to discover aspects of the biodiversity of the site. This gives our young members the special experience of seeing close up the mammals living on site and the trust members help them use charts to identify the creatures trapped. The children had the chance to see some or our birdlife too, and at times wander off to enjoy their own special places.

We then started sorting out everything we needed ready to open up the site to our visitors at 2:00. We gathered together all the plants we had ready to sell on our plant stall.

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“The Tea Bags” our refreshments sub-committee, began putting together their tea shop with the help of many volunteers. Gazebos had to be erected, tables and chairs arranged and all the cups, saucers and other paraphanalia needed sorted and organised. All day from 8:30 onwards our members delivered home made cakes and biscuits.

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A gazebo had to be positioned to create our ticket sales and info area. Jill and Geoff manned this area while we were open greeting all our visitors and giving our information sheets, quiz sheets, trail guides and the important competition voting slips. The photographs entered by our members into the photo competition were pinned to a board ready to be voted on by our guests during the afternoon.

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Every year our guests are asked to judge various competitions including our scarecrow competition. This year our theme was “Heroes and Villains” and here are a few for you to enjoy.

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Our competition this year for children was “Making A Miniature Garden in a Yogurt Pot”.

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We also invite our guests to vote for their favourite photographs in the selection entered by members.

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We invite local conservation groups to come along too to show our visitors all about their work, and this year the Shropshire Mammal Society, the Shropshire Wildlife Trust and the Shropshire Beekeepers Society all joined in.

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Our Tea Bags tea shop soon got busy and by the end of the day the Tea Bags had served hundreds of cups of tea or coffee along with a wonderful choice of home made cakes baked by our members.

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Close by a local Ukele Band entertained our guests as they enjoyed their refreshments.

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One little lad was mesmerised by their magical sounds. He turned his back on all other distractions and sat down to listen.

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Lots of our members work on their plots or sit close by their plots to greet our visitors, answer queries and share their secrets of growing good crops. Even our younger members are proud to show their produce to our visitors.

After the last of our visitors left and the site grows quiet once again the task of returning the allotments back to its usual character quickly began. The Tea Bag tea shop soon disappeared as helpers put away their cups and saucers, tea urn and generator and tables and chairs.

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And the winner of the scarecrow competition was Robin Hood made by Pete and Sherlie!

After a busy morning setting up, a busy time looking after our guests and then a busy time returning everything to normal the site finally became quiet, we locked the gate and wearily made our ways home. When we took stock of the day we were delighted to discover we had been host to 355 visitors and sent nearly £1700 to the National Garden Scheme and their wonderful charities.

Tags Bowbrook Allotment Community, communal gardens, community gardening, community spirit, National Gardens Scheme, NGS

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Sharing our allotments with all generations.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date July 25, 2015
3 Comments on Sharing our allotments with all generations.

On our allotment site, Bowbrook Allotment Community, we try to be as inclusive as possible and encourage everyone to become members, take part in our activities or simply visit us to enjoy our special community garden.

So far this summer we have hosted youngsters from our local Beavers and Rainbows groups and more elderly groups from the Fitz Friendship Group and the National Women’s Register.

The Cubs came on a wet evening to help us with garden jobs in our borders, weeding and mulching. A week later we were joined by our local Rainbows group who came for a wander around our Interest Trail using one of our quiz sheets. They enjoyed the excitement of our wildlife areas and community gardens. The pics below show the Cubs weeding the edge of one of our Butterfly Borders and the Rainb0ws exploring our Fruit Avenue.

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This week we entertained a group called the Fitz Friendship Group who were mostly elderly but equally excited at visiting our site.

We serve our visitors with tea/coffee with cakes and we have our own tea committee who call themselves the Tea Bags. The first two photos below show our beautiful antique cups and saucers lined up ready to be filled and our selection of tables and chairs ready to be used.

Anne can be seen working away in the kitchen area of our communal hut, slicing the home-made cakes ready for serving.

When our visitors arrived we assembled for a quick background talk about our site explaining how we have developed over the six years of our existence, before setting off on a gentle stroll around.

As we walked the trail Jude, Sherlie, Pete and I pointed out areas of interest. We were amazed how many memories our wildflower meadows evoked. It was a slow but very successful wander. Several of the group found walking difficult but showed such determination to get as far as they could.

We call these sessions “Walks and Talks”, and the fees our visitors pay go towards the charities of the National Garden Scheme. The refreshment money helps to run the sessions and enables us to purchase equipment to make such days easier.

After the “Walk and Talk” refreshments were relished by all. The “Tea Bags” waited on and the four of us who led the tour wandered between tables answering questions.

Here I am with tea cup in hand trying to share words of wisdom!

Our collection of camping stoves were kept busy boiling water to make drinks and the cakes disappeared rapidly.

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A great day was had by all and our visitors left tired out but well-refreshed talking about what they had seen.

Within a half hour we had cleared away and all that was left to see of the day was the collection of flower arrangements Sherlie had created for table centres, using flowers picked from the cutting border on our plot. We have another seven groups already booked for the rest of the summer.

Tags Bowbrook Allotment Community, communal gardens, community gardening, community spirit

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The Dawn Chorus at our Allotments

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date June 12, 2015

To give an extra dimension to our Spring Celebrations at our allotment community, Bowbrook Allotment Community, we added a second social day. We met just as the sun was rising in order to hear the dawn chorus and experience the site coming to life. We soon met a problem though as the coded padlock on our gates is black so it was very difficult to get the numbers lined up to open up. Once that hurdle was overcome we had a great few hours.

It was strange to be on site when it was so quiet. The sky began to colour up before the sun rose and we admired the patterns that jets were painting with their vapour trails across the sky.

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We wandered off around the site following our interest trail paths listening out for the songs of birds as they awoke to add their tunes to the dawn chorus. We were lucky to hear a Yellow Hammer singing heartily on top of our wild hedges. The loudest songs were probably those of the many Wrens who share the allotments with us. But the noisiest birds of all were the Rooks which nest in their rookery sited in the group of mature trees close by. As the light began to appear a few scouts left the rookery and noisily flew over our heads and off into the distance. Upon their return ten minutes later they seemed to have brought news of the best place to start the day’s search for food. Slowly small groups of Rooks flew over us all flying in the same direction to return ten minutes or so later.

As the light slowly increased we heard more birds joining in the chorus, Robins, Blackbirds, Song Thrushes, Dunnock, Chaffinches, Greenfinches, Whitethroats and Blackcaps. We spotted Nuthatches, Treecreepers and a Great Spotted Woodpecker who searched our mature Oak and Sycamore trees for bugs to eat. Collared Doves and Wood Pigeons added their repetitive calls to the chorus and a pair of Magpies tried to spoil it all with their raucous cries. The beauty of the dawn chorus could however not be spoiled by a couple of Magpies.

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We were lucky to see an orange sun rise above the surrounding trees. Young Ella at just five years old was totally speechless! We were engulfed in a golden glow.

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We were lucky to be on site just as the parent birds were leaving the nest boxes. We watched in awe as the adult Blue Tits and Great Tits made so many journeys in search of food and listened to the youngsters greeting their every arrival with raucous cries. We enjoyed our free entertainment. Adults and children alike were mesmerised!

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Part way around our walk we were joined by our family of ducks. A mother Mallard and her ducklings. We met them again when we reached the pond, where they swam for a while and then found a spot in the marshy end where the sun was shining for a good long preen. Can you spot them in the third of these photos?

We returned to one of our communal hubs, the one by our communal hut, where we keep our cookers, crockery and cutlery. First job was to light our fire pits to warm us up. We soon had water boiling for warming mugs of tea and coffee and the aroma of bacon frying was most welcoming. So bacon baps and warm drinks finished off a perfect morning experience together.

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Time for a good laugh too!

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After our breakfast there was time for young Ella to water the children’s mini-meadows, ably assisted by Wendy. It is so good to see different generations gardening together.

Tags allotments, Bowbrook Allotment Community, Bowbrook Allotments, communal gardens, community gardening, community spirit, dawn chorus

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Celebrating Spring at our allotments

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date May 24, 2015
1 Comment on Celebrating Spring at our allotments

At our allotments, Bowbrook Allotment Community, we celebrate each season of the year. We celebrated Spring in late April, with activities and games for the children followed by a BBQ sat around our new fire pits.

One of our members, Sherlie had planned craft activities for the children including painting faces on pebbles complete with moving eyes and decorating plant pots.

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Our social celebration days provide the chance to catch up for a chat and to get to know each other better. It lets new members meet their fellow gardeners too. The fire pits draw people in like magnets.

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Out tea committee, the Tea Bags, were on hand to keep us all plied with tea and coffee and cake of course!

Michael, our machinery expert always finds time to look after our machines and teach others as well as looking after his own plot. He showed us how to use our new strimmer and demonstrated different cultivators and tillers. This gave members the chance to try machinery out with Michael on hand to help out and advise. Everyone feels so much more confident after advice from Michael.

We always try to involve children in some gardening activities too giving adults and children a chance to discover skills together. At our Spring Celebration we sowed wildflower meadows in pots. Everyone joined in from the youngest upwards. The youngest gardener is Edward who loves his gardening already especially watering. He has a wonderful sense of humour so he really enjoyed showering me with a hose!

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The children are now looking after their mini-meadows and we have made them responsible for watering and checking on them regularly. It is good to see how keen the youngsters are to sow seeds and tend them afterwards. These meadows will form a part of our display at this year’s Shrewsbury Flower Show – in fact we hope they will be the centre piece.

We also provided the children with games to play which involved them in exploring the site and its wildlife areas. We challenged them to fit as many tiny objects as possible into a matchbox, and challenged them to take their parents and/or grandparents off on a scavenger hunt. We love to see different generations getting involved in our activities. It is so heartening to see how involved children can be learning about and enjoying being close to nature and gardening.

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