Connecting growers to share gardens and skills

Project start: February 2008
Contact: Carolyn Piets

Coming out of an early open space, Garden Buddies was initially run enthusiastically by one person with little planning or support from the main Food group. Contact was rather limited and as energy failed, the pilot project seemed to fade too..The group learned a lot from this and now uses an evaluation process before starting any new project. Many people had asked for help with renovating their gardens and there weren’t enough active members to keep this up.

The main group recognised the state of this project and took it back into the fold, The aim was to encourage Garden Buddies to take over the running of the group themselves. There was a relaunch one Sunday in Subud House and nine people came to listen / contribute and eat cake!

However despite some efforts, this project only struggled on with the same stalwarts. Its future was discussed and the group agreed that the perceived needs  had been filled by Lewes Landshare , tv, books and other schemes. The possibility of a need to get growing again has been acknowledged. Our Food up Front project can provide the franework for further development.

November 2010

See below for our initial flyer:

Would you like to be on a contact list with other gardeners in Lewes? Successfully growing plants as a community by sharing our gardens, experience, skills and time? You can make new friends and discover how to:-
• grow our own food in our ‘back gardens’
• know people with no gardens who want to garden
• know who can’t garden their garden at all/ want help
• know how to grow herbs in large or small spaces
• know about the nutritional and medicinal value of food
• know how to sprout beans, seeds indoors
• know how to prune trees and store/preserve produce
• know who has fruit trees with excess fruit in autumn
• know what fruit and nut trees to plant and where
• know how to grow winter greens
• know how to sow seeds successfully
• know how to compost
• know how to test soil and get it in balance, fertilisers
• know about pest control/companion gardening
• know where best to buy plants / locally
• know who are expert horticulturalists in Lewes
• produce a little local handout that gives all the above info.

If you would like to be on the list or want further details please contact Carolyn Piets on 01273 471758, or email ‘carolyn_piets@hotmail.com’