Images from Coffee & Cake Clear-Up Day

What a beautiful space...

Easton Corner Garden is a beautiful but slightly neglected space situated by the Bristol to Bath cycle path opposite the Easton Community Centre. There has been several attempts in the past to turn it into a vibrant community hub, but for different reasons it hasn't been well maintained. The past attempts to keep the garden going have proved to be difficult.   

We're not from Bristol but one of the things we love about the city is that there are so many community projects going on. We knew when we moved here that we wanted to get involved with a community project. Since we live not far from the garden and have many times admired the space when walking or cycling past it, we got really excited about doing our Soil and Fertility Design Project there for our Practical Sustainability Course. 

After doing a site survey and interviews we found out what some of the difficulties in turning the garden into a long lasting project have been. Like with a lot of projects lack of funding has been an issue. So has keeping the number of volunteers up. According to Liz who works at the Community Center the lack of funding, continuos vandalism in the space and other factors such as rats and trash ending up in the compost, has lead to volunteers moving on to other projects.

However, the great location in terms of beauty and accessability and the fact that both Foodcycle and In the Mix Café needs somewhere to get rid of their foodwaste means that it would be a shame not to give it another go! In permaculture one of the key principles is turning problems into solutions. That's what we hope to do with this space, to learn from trial and error but to not give up on turning it into a space in which people from the community can enjoy and get involved with. We hope that it will become a space where skillsharing and community events will take place. A space which will enable people to learn about and see the benefits of composting, turning waste into valuable soil which we then use for plants and food!

We've had a great start. Together with students from Foodcycle and SIFE we organised a Coffee and Cake Clear-Up Day in the garden. It was a great success since 20-30 people from the community showed up to help. We were there again the other day to do some weeding and several bypassers stopped, showed interest and gave positive feedback! So we're really excited about the project and hope you are too! 

If you'd like to get involved please contact Sara Hale on 07423741709 or sarahale86@gmail.com.