Wildlife gardening and growing – Tuesday 29th October 2013

Wildlife gardening and growing
Tuesday 29th October
From 1pm to 4pm

Join the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust for an afternoon of activities and advice on how we can feed ourselves as well as the wildlife in our gardens. Staff and volunteers will be on hand to show you how to plant a hedgerow bursting with berries and blossom. You can also find out how planting spring bulbs can brighten up your spring garden and feed the bees. Collect your free seeds to grow some super insect friendly herbs and flowers in your garden and veg patch.

Venue: Stirley Community Farm, Huddersfield.
Booking: Please call 01904 659570.

 

Community Garden get-together – 7th August 2012

Growing Newsome herb planter
outside Raymond Carroll’s shop on Towngate

Community Garden
off Occupation Road
Tuesday 7th August
10.30am to 12 noon

We’ve had mixed fortunes with our vegetable planters in Newsome village so far. Our herb planter outside Raymond and Jenny’s shop on Towngate seems to be thriving in all the rain. We hope you’re enjoying the fresh herbs there, including borage, fennel and oregano.

The Community Garden on Occupation Road isn’t looking quite so good though – it’s getting overgrown again and needs a bit of care and attention.

Growing Newsome participants and volunteers from Stirley Farm are meeting at the Community Garden on 7th August for a bit of a tidy up and a chat. Please come along if you can spare an hour to give the garden a helping hand.

We’ll be getting some more planters for Church Lane soon, and we’d like to have a regular get-together to keep things well looked-after. Please let us know if you’d like to join in. We’d also love to hear your suggestions about what you’d like us to plant. More herbs – or something different?

If you have any suggestions, please leave a reply on this page or email growingnewsome@gmail.com

Food and Flowers in the ‘Secret’ garden

Thursday 7th June
10am to 12 noon

Hall Bower Chapel Garden

One Friday morning in the Easter holidays, a group of budding gardeners came to the Chapel Garden to sow seeds in the veg patch and bee friendly flowers in the borders. The garden has been lovingly maintained by Malcolm Ford and Karina Hepworth, and flowers and foliage are often used by the flower arrangers for church. In April a new set of volunteers came in to lend a hand and learn about this beautiful ‘secret garden’.
On hand to help was Kim Warren from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Stirley Farm.

We hope the garden will help show us how to grow fruit and veg in our gardens, as well as helping wildlife from the surrounding fields. We would love you to come to the next planting session in this little haven (and sample some of the salads!) Tools and guidance provided – please bring stout shoes and outdoor clothes.

Plant a fruit tree in your garden for £5

 

The 1,000 Trees Project is collaboration between Kirklees Streetscene Service (Parks and Landscapes) and Newsome Councilors, funded through the Area Committee. The object of the project is to plant 1000 fruit trees across the ward. These trees will bring many benefits to the area including improved landscape quality, improved diets and physical activity levels for locals who pick the fruit, additional wildlife habitat for some endangered wildlife species and also a reduction in pollution levels.

Phase 1 involved the planting of fruit trees across Newsome Ward on council owned open green space. Phase 2 involved 60 apple trees being planted in house gardens across Newsome Ward by the householders.  Phase 3 will again enable any Newsome resident to plant a fruit tree in their garden. Residents will be offered one fruit tree at the reduced price of £5. This offer will also include a tree stake, tree tie and planting / care instruction sheet. The money collected will then be used to provide plants for a proposed herb corridor along a public footpath in the Newsome Ward.

Julian Faulkner, Kirklees Allotments Manager / Social Forestry Officer and Councillor Andrew Cooper will be at the

Growing Newsome Seed Swap on Saturday 3rd March, 10am to 3pm at Newsome Scout Hall

to distribute trees and  to offer advice to those wishing to take part.

 

 

Community Garden get-together – 29th November 2011

Community Garden get-together
Tuesday 29th November
1.30pm to 3.30pm 

Growing Newsome and Stirley Farm have adopted the Community Garden on Occupation Road in Newsome village.

This overgrown space was converted into a garden in 2009 with funding that the Community Assistance Network secured via a Grassroots grant. Growing Newsome members planted some vegetables there a couple of years ago, but there’s since been uncertainty over who is going to look after the space, and the brambles have re-asserted themselves (as they do).

So Growing Newsome and Stirley Farm have decided that we’re going to look after the garden between us, and we’ll have a get-together now and then to tidy things up and do some more planting. Soon local residents will be able to enjoy fresh vegetables, fruit and herbs from the garden again – anyone who lives nearby is welcome to pick from the garden.

We’ll let you know each time that we’re meeting at the garden, so that you can come along and lend a hand, or come and chat to us about food growing. Our first visit is on Tuesday 29th November from 1.30pm. Please come and join in if you can.

 

Garden of Delights – Sunday 26th June 2011

Garden of Delights

Sunday 26th June 2011

1pm to 4pm

Red House Museum

Oxford Road

Gomersal

Cleckheaton

We’re taking part in this year’s ‘Garden of Delights’ at Red House Museum. This event is a delightful way to discover and enjoy the beautiful gardens at this former woollen cloth merchant’s home, which was often visited and much loved by Charlotte Bronte.

The restored 1830s Red House Garden is at its most beautiful at this time. For just a short time each year the fabulously scented old roses are in bloom, with centuries old varieties such as ‘Celestial’ and ‘Old Blush’. You can also see lots of unusual period flowers with intriguing names such as ‘Obedient Plant’, ‘Dame’s Violet’ and ‘Bear’s Breeches’.

The event includes:

• Stalls and shows, including the Growing Newsome plant stall.
• Flower Arranging demonstrations.
• Garden discovery trail.
• Displays and free garden information.
• Brass Monkeys Jazz Band and Accordionist Hugh Barwell.
• 19th century costumed characters telling visitors about the period garden.
• Herbal craft activities such as making scented herb bags.
• Lots of children’s craft activities.
• Paper Filigree craft.
• The Red House Craft Bee with a variety of textile crafts.
• Archery with the Nova Bowmen.
• Croquet on the lawns.
• Other period games such as battledore and shuttlecock or hoop-rolling.

Free admission and free parking.

Red House Museum – venue details

Garden of Delights (pdf) – event leaflet

Growing ideas at Castle Grange

We recently visited Castle Grange on Ing Lane, where we had a look around the grounds with Lou and Claire. Castle Grange is a care home for people with dementia, with an enclosed garden where the residents can sit outside. When nearby Headfield Road was widened to make room for the new school, the care home lost a strip of land that was part of their garden. In exchange, they’ve now been given some extra land at the side of Castle Grange, which will be leveled soon to make it easier for the residents to use.

The staff would like to use this patch of land to provide some food growing activities for the people who live at Castle Grange, and to involve the local community too. 

We had an interesting talk about how food can help to spark memories for people with dementia – anything from the aroma of herbs to the crunch of a stick of celery. It really made us think in a different way about the value of growing food and the impact that it can have on people’s well-being. Of course, we’d like to do what we can to help.

We will try to help the staff at Castle Grange with planning the space (which needs to be safe for the residents), with applying for funding if needed, and for getting things up and running. We’re also looking for some people who might like to help Lou and Claire to organise some planting activities there. Any help that you can offer will be greatly appreciated – it really could help to improve people’s lives.

If you’d like to help with food growing at Castle Grange, or if you’re just interested in finding out a bit more, please use our contact form to let us know.

The lost gardens of Newsome

You can find all sorts underneath a tangle of brambles, if you make a bit of effort to look.

On Saturday 20th February 2010 we found a whole garden underneath some brambles, and we’ve taken the first step towards reclaiming this lost garden so that it can be used for food growing.

The garden’s owner gradually lost the garden to the brambles which crept in steadily over the back fence and kept on going until they reached the house. Although she used to grow thriving flowers there, the task of sorting out the tangle eventually became too overwhelming for her to deal with. 

So she kindly offered her garden to Newsome Ward Community Forum, in the hopes that someone else can make good use of it to grow their own food. There is land like this all over Newsome – it’s a lost treasure waiting to be reclaimed.

Just looking at the bramble patch probably made this garden’s owner feel daunted – and we felt the same when we arrived there on a cold February morning. So we did the only thing we could… started at one end and carried on until we reached the fence at the far end.

It took two just hours for us to uncover the garden, reversing the journey that the brambles had made over the years.

Eleven of us turned up to work on the garden, including several members of Newsome Ward Timebanking.

We were also joined for a while by a group of environmental students from Leeds University who were on a field trip to look at sustainable living projects in Huddersfield.  We’d like to thank them for their interest in Growing Newsome, and for mucking in to help us round up the brambles.

Between us, we discovered a lot in a couple of hours.

What we found underneath the brambles was:

a garden, an odd plant pot or two, a collection of balls (in varying states of decay), a tree, some snowdrops and a robin. We also found that overwhelming tasks are not impossible if you have someone to help. We shared experiences about food growing. We talked about what we might do in the future. 

Under those brambles, we also found ideas, new friends and a bit of inspiration.

Please contact us if you’re interested in sharing your garden, if you’re looking for somewhere in Newsome to grow food, of if you’d like to take part in future activities.

Read Andrew’s blog about the day: Reasons to be cheerful…

Help needed to clear an overgrown garden

We’re looking for volunteers to help clear an overgrown garden in Newsome. We plan to meet there around 10.30am on Saturday 20^th February 2010 to do an initial strip-out of brambles and other weeds. We need to break the back of the brambles before they begin to burst out into Spring.

The session will last no more than two hours, and we’ll bring flasks of tea and biscuits. Please bring some gardening gloves if you can. The householder will be at work, so unfortunately we can’t offer toilet facilities – unless anyone who lives nearby is willing to offer?

This is the first unused garden that has been offered by a Newsome resident for other people to use for food growing. We’ll be taking photos as the garden develops to show what’s possible. If you’re looking for a garden to grow food in, please get in touch.

If you can help on 20^th February, please email ruth.elliott2@ntlworld.com

Community Garden – Occupation Road

herb planter

There’s now a Community Garden on Occupation Road (off the top of Lockwood Scar, behind Towngate), which anyone who lives nearby is welcome to use. We’ve started things off by planting some Autumn / Winter vegetables and some hardy herbs. If you see anything growing there that you’d like to eat, please feel free to pick it. You can also add your own plants to the garden. Another large planter will be available soon.

 
Most of the plants came from Colne Valley Garden Centre. We’d like to say thank you to their staff for kindly donating some vegetable seeds to support the work of Growing Newsome.

Thank you also to David Browning, who donated some strawberry plants from his allotment, and to Mr Charlesworth who helped us with the watering.

 

This land was previously overgrown and unusable. Members of Newsome Ward Timebanking helped to turn the site into a community garden. Can you think of other places that we can work together to improve? If you know of any spare land in Newsome that could be used for growing food, please contact us.