Uniting people through gardening

Experienced allotment holders like Dick Rout have been lending their expertise

At Bluebell Allotments in Norwich, a community gardening project is reaping the benefits of its first year's work.

Reverand Philip Young of St Thomas's Church, Norwich, is running the project which has seen locals growing their own food.

The plot of land was overgrown and uncared for when they took it over but the group have now turned it around.

Phillip is now looking forward to harvesting the produce so they can all enjoy the benefits of their hard work.

As the St. Thomas's Community Garden Project settles down into its first year of operation, we have about twelve active participants in the scheme and five or six who are contributing in other ways.

We have taken on two allotments, both belonging to church members who were struggling to cope on their own.

We've successfully cleared and planted up both allotments and now wait with interest to see what grows.

There's plenty to do - keeping the weeds down, earthing-up the potatoes and completing the planting.

The peas weren't a great success as few germinated and we had to re-sow them but we've already harvested rhubarb and radishes and the small gooseberries are looking good.

We meet at 11am on a Saturday morning when we are able. We have a system where we keep a record of our progress and what needs doing on a whiteboard in the shed so that if anyone can go up at other times, they are not at a loss as to what to do.

Dick Rout is undoubtedly the most active member of the group and is a wizard with the hoe and everything else for that matter.

He also has his own allotment, but is enjoying helping out at both communal plots.

Jeremy and Vanna also help out when they can spare the time away from their own allotment.

It's great to have people like Dick, Jeremy and Vanna around. They are experts and give good advice to the less experienced.

Everybody worked very hard to clear the ground ready for planting and as I look at the photographs, it is remarkable what has been achieved in such a short time.

The group hope to have enough produce to sell as well as eat

Harvesting will be interesting as we haven't quite worked out how we are going to divide the spoils!

I think there will be quite a lot of produce - probably enough for all of us and some left over to sell at the back of the church.

A family with two children have joined us on the second allotment and have planted pumpkins, courgettes and sweetcorn to show their children that gardening is fun. Hopefully we'll all get to know one another and swap produce.

The philosophy behind the project is working well. One or two people on their own can easily become demoralised as the weeds take over if you miss a week or two but by working together, we can avoid this.

Everyone is doing their bit to keep on top of it and we are making new friends and encouraging one another.

We also hope that we can encourage others to experience the enjoyment of community gardening with those of us who are more experienced passing our skills on to others.

It would be good to expand the group. There is plenty of scope for involving others, perhaps in our local schools.

Maybe there are people out there who have a garden which is too much for them because of ill health or increasing age. We'd love them to let us know if they would like some help growing fruit and vegetables.

'Greening' our church, our community and our planet and growing food locally all makes a lot of sense in the current economic and ecological climate. Exercise, healthy eating and good friendship are of benefit to individuals and to the community.