Everton Community Garden

We were lucky enough to spend some time at the fantastic Everton Community Garden at the weekend, a place I'd never heard of previously but fell in love with immediately! My family was having a bit of a family reunion and as one of my relatives is heavily involved in the running of the garden, she suggested we have it there. My great-grandparents were the common link for this branch of the family, and they originally settled in Everton from Wales and Ireland. It was extra special meeting relatives I've never met before in the exact place our ancestors lived!

Arriving at Everton Community Garden

My relative gave us a tour of the garden and explained that it's run by volunteers for the local community. Like many other community gardens, Everton Community Garden has lots of produce, which it gives away to locals in return for donations to help with the garden's running costs. Everything is organic and the entire enterprise is run on a shoestring budget, but the volunteers have done an amazing job with the site.

The vast majority of the beds are raised, making them accessible to a wide range of users. There's an SEN school alongside the garden, and the pupils often visit the site. The site is paved, making it accessible to wheelchair users, and there is plenty of space between beds. 

There are two large polytunnels on the site, and these made me determined that we need a greenhouse or small polytunnel on allotment 22 as soon as possible! I really want the extra flexibility and possibilities you get with greenhouse growing, added to which, such structures make a great shelter from the biting cold wind in winter!

Everton Community Garden polytunnel

We visited right at the end of September, obviously at the end of the growing season for most crops, but there was still a huge amount of activity in the outdoor beds and in the vast polytunnels. There were bountiful raspberry bushes and strawberry plants (still!), lots of squash, piles of courgettes and mountains of tomatoes and peppers to name just a few. I was also impressed by the delicious grapes growing both inside one of the polytunnels and along the outdoor archway. I had no idea British-grown grapes could taste so good!

Grapes growing in the polytunnel

I picked up a few tips from some of my gardening relatives, including some companion planting ideas, and am keen to put their suggestions into practice. I'm also definitely going to be looking to grow yellow raspberries on allotment 22 next year after sampling just how tasty they are. I'm also going to be branching out into as many different types of squash as I can as the varieties you can buy in the shops are so limited. 

We came home with a huge bag of fruit and veg, an added bonus to what was already a lovely day. I think the courgettes, peppers and tomatoes we brought back with us will most likely end up in some kind of roasted Mediterranean veg pasta, perfect for brightening up the chilly start to October we're having.

Homegrown tomatoes of all sizes

If you're in the Merseyside area, I highly recommend you pay a visit to this lovely garden. If nothing else, you'll be able to pick up some amazing organic produce for the cost of a donation to the organisation! The garden was so much better than I expected and it's made me want to get involved with a similar project closer to home so I'm currently researching other community gardens in the area. If you're interested in setting up something similar, the RHS has a great resource section on community gardens and how to go about starting one. The Know How Non Profit site also has some good beginner info, and provides links to lots of useful sites that should help you. 

Jenny  x

Roping the Family in!

The family getting stuck in

Last Saturday was a mild day with broken sunshine, a gentle breeze and no more than a light shower forecast - in other words, great allotment weather! I bribed my family with a picnic to come and join us down on the allotment, expecting maybe a little light weeding from them for an hour or so, and nothing more. They arrived about 1pm, however, and stayed until gone 6:30pm!

The age range of our family helpers stretched from 8 years to 77, and everyone got stuck in. The mare's tail is by now in that fir-tree like appearance phase and is so invasive and such an eyesore, yet so easy to pull up, that I think everyone was determined to get rid of as much as possible!

My little niece was delighted to find countless frogs, and she was tasked with moving them out of harm's way to the far end of the allotment where it's very damp and dark. Approximately 20 square metres of the bottom of the plot is filled with towering brambles so I think it'll be a while before we get to work on that!

As there was a team of people dealing with the mare's tail and the overhanging brambles from a neighbouring plot, we decided to make a start on clearing the broken glass from the greenhouse area.

The remains of the greenhouse :-(

Mare's tail for days...

I've no idea what happened to the greenhouse but I suspect it was been completely smashed by vandals at some point as we didn't find a single sheet of intact glass. It's disappointing not to have a greenhouse or shed but I guess if the plot was better equipped, someone else would have snapped it up and we'd still be on the waiting list!

We still haven't decided what to do about the greenhouse - the site secretary told us originally that it would still be fine to use if we got hold of some replacement glass but after taking a closer look at it, a lot of the metal frame components are very bent out of shape. We managed to clear a lot of the glass and rubbish from the greenhouse area, but there's still a long way to go!