Saddleworth Incredible Edible 2021 review

By Sheila Thorp

After a busy and positive first season, we have had time to take stock during these last few weeks, and also to begin planning for next year.

Despite the inevitable slow start due to Covid, the Parish yard in Uppermill has proved to be a good growing area as well as having the beginnings of a community hub. One of the delights has been our growing links with members of the Parish and a range of groups which use the centre. It has been good to share the monthly coffee morning during these cold months – inside and out!

Elsewhere, St Mary’s Church have agreed to provide an area to start a Greenfield IES.

There are a growing number of planters by the canal, thanks to ICAN and we have taken over some containers in the grounds of Saddleworth Cemetery.

In addition, a productive meeting with Oldham Council environmental staff and councillors for Saddleworth has resulted in IES taking over part of the Nature Garden behind the Brownhill centre. Further work on this will begin in the early spring when a large, cleared bed will be made available.

All this new work means that we are creating a range of sites around Saddleworth (and so becoming more visible and accessible) and small teams of us will need to concentrate on different ones. Happily, we are slowly but steadily acquiring growing interest and new volunteers. We hope for even more in 2022.

We are also developing links with residents of ages, and hope next year to begin organising small activities which will encourage families and local schools to get involved, making use of a range of vegetables, herbs and fruit.

Our wider links continue, initially with the experienced team in Todmorden, and more locally with VIP at Waterhead and of course, with Get Oldham Growing.

For more information regarding Incredible Edibles Saddleworth contact incredibleediblesaddleworth@gmail.com

Growing Greens

It’s been a few years since Waterhead Park’s former Bowling Green has generated as much interest as it has recently. Residents, a range of local organisations, schools, local Councillors and housing and voluntary sector partners have been coming together to create a new purpose and vision for the site; a food growing, learning and community hub, managed by, and for, local people…

It was a group of nearby residents that recognised the potential community value of the land and with the help of Get Oldham Growing and its partners; have taken the first steps towards making the project a reality. With potential designs in hand and raft of ideas about activities, training and how to use the green to improve the wellbeing of its users, a community meeting was held.

Despite the rain, turnout was great and ideas were exchanged on the big challenge for the group; how to create a site that meets the needs of the community AND gives them the income to keep their work going long term. Ideas included (but were certainly not limited to) hosting school trips, pop up farmer’s markets, veg box schemes, after school clubs and even bee keeping! – do you know of something that has worked well elsewhere??

All agreed that this project is a unique opportunity to tap into a huge local interest in growing food, bring the community together and create something that will benefit people of all ages and horticultural abilities, for many years to come.

This work has attracted attention from elsewhere too, with the Royal Horticultural Society keen to support the work in these early stages through a community workshop. If you are interested in being involved let us know. In the meantime watch this space…

A Secret Garden in Watersheddings

An inspirational story that shows the impact of people working together and the power growing can have on individuals’ and communities’ wellbeing. Caroline Lawson tells the story of how Watershedding’s ‘Secret Garden’ came to be…

“It started with a rat in my back garden…

We had just been alley-gated in the area and the land at the back of our houses was a mix of council and private land, on the private bit stood three very run down garages, this was where everyone used to dump rubbish and large groups of young people came to drink and just cause a nuisance to the local residents, at our request the council knocked down the garages.

A large amount of rubble and debris was left behind. So one day I just thought I would go out and try and clear the area up, having been out about 2 hours and not really getting anywhere with the rubbish a few neighbours came out just to see what was going on.

I told them the story of the rat, and within an hour 15 neighbours were in the back (these people only really said hello to each other on door steps or in passing) we decided to hire a skip and a friend of a friend had a mini digger and by 7pm we had cleared the area.

The morning after I just went out to sweep and put come plants and tubs of flowers at my back gate, then another neighbour came out and did the same and by 11am I had put the kettle on for at least 8 neighbours we sat and chatted about what we would like to do with the space.

We all decided that we would tend to the space and keep it tidy, getting back the old “community spirit” that I knew of when I was a little girl. We also did a little newsletter to let neighbours know what we wanted to do with the rest of the alley and ask their opinion.

Since then we have just done what we like doing best and that’s gardening, growing veggies and watching out for the people that live within the boundaries of our secret garden (neighbours have said they feel safer and are happy that we have created the community garden). We became a proper community group with a constitution back in May 2012.

We entered into the Bloom & Grow competition and are very proud of what we have achieved; this year we won Best Community Garden and we got a Merit for Overall Best Communal Garden. More importantly, the neighbours on my street are now all friends and we see each other every day!”