After more than two years of planning, our new Feed Bristol project is about to start. Avon Wildlife Trust has just taken over 7 acres of market gardens at Parkside Nurseries on Frenchay Park Rd in Stapleton. Over the next couple of months we will be transforming it in to a place where anyone and everyone can come along and help us grow some tasty, nature friendly food.
We've got a lot of work to do to transform the site in to a friendly and inspiring place for people. We'll be putting in basic facilities like toilets and a special building for training and relaxing as well as creating raised beds for disabled growers, small plots for schools and community groups and ploughing up areas to grow vegetables.
The land is already good for wildlife with old hedgerows and fruit trees, but we will be making it even better by planting flowery corridors for bees and butterflies and creating a big pond for frogs and toads. This will make Feed Bristol an even more exciting and special place to visit and the natural balance should mean that our vegetables do not suffer from too many pests and diseases.
We start all this work tomorrow, so watch this space to witness the transformation!
If you want to get involved in this project, please email us at feedbristol@avonwildlifetrust.org.uk
Feed Bristol has been made possible with funding and support from Big Lottery Local Food Scheme, Bristol Green Capital Community Challenge Fund and Bristol City Council.
Meet Susan Rogers. She is going to be Feed Bristol's Seasonal Project Worker, helping you to grow food on the Feed Bristol site if you come for a visit. Susan joined us for our big site sort out session last week, although she doesn't really start work until the middle of March.
Avon Wildlife Trust staff held a workday on Friday 24th February to begin sorting out the land. This included collecting anything useful that we could reuse like old plant pots and hose pipes and putting them away somewhere safe. We found all sorts of useful things including some ancient weighing scales that will take pride of place in the Feed Bristol Centre when it is completed. The other big job for the day was marking out the buffer zone around the badger sett on the site to make sure no building work or tractor ploughing disturbs the badgers.
We also plan to make sure the area around the badger sett becomes a really good area for wildflowers attracting more bees and other useful insects to the land. It's very important to us that all of the food growing that takes place at Feed Bristol is nature friendly and this includes making space for creatures, like badgers, that might enjoy digging up some of the vegetables we will be trying to grow - we hope to minmise this by making sure their favourite trails are not planted with veg because it would only put temptation in their way!
After more than two years of planning, our new Feed Bristol project is about to start. Avon Wildlife Trust has just taken over 7 acres of market gardens at Parkside Nurseries on Frenchay Park Rd in Stapleton. Over the next couple of months we will be transforming it in to a place where anyone and everyone can come along and help us grow some tasty, nature friendly food. 