Community Gardens

Sirhowy Hill Woodlands

Sessions Wednesday 10 a.m -12 p.m - All welcome. Children must be accompanied by a responsible adult

Sirhowy Hill Woodlands

What is the Community Garden?

How it started...

Started in 2021 to complement the tree nursery as we thought it was a natural progression to have the two on the same site where there would be more sense of local ownership and guardianship and it’s the site where we eventually hope to add the woodland school to the community hub.

With a food poverty grant from BGBC, we purchased 20 ton of compost/soil improver, but before we could spread it we had to clear the site of scrub willow and rush, then to fence it and “a la Charles Dowding” the no dig guru, we carboarded the whole site, thank you Thomas Waste Brynmawr for supplying vast quantities of free cardboard and Howard Withers and his digger for clearing and ditching the site.

Sprouting new beginnings

Our volunteers manfully and manually spread the 20 ton of material and we put woodchip on the paths.

We have planted lettuce, chard, peas, mangetout, onions, radishes, broad beans, runner beans, beetroot, potatoes, carrots and parsnips with mixed results as though we have used organic chicken manure pellets and calcified seaweed, the compost is so nutrient deficient (its really just a soil improver) that everything is struggling, so we will be increasing the fertility with well rotted manure and composted woodchip and plant material.

There are a selection of fruit trees, apples -cookers and eaters, plums, damsons, gages, pears and cobnuts funded by Groundwork Wales, so we hope to have a productive fruit area in years to come, we will strip off nearly all the fruit that has set this year so that they can develop a good root system

Community involvement

The food poverty grant has enabled us to buy fruit processing equipment for juicing and pasteurising as well, and to buy a decent polytunnel and fruit cage and all the tools we will need for our community garden volunteers to use.

With the help of the soil association Plant and share month and the Blaenau gwent food partnership and the generosity of Gavin Shrinder and Abergavenny garden centre we hosted an event on site where we gave away over £300 of edible plants and herbs which was very well attended and a great success with the local community, some of whom have become volunteers with us.

We are also indebted to Pavel and Violetta of Pauls organic veg boxes Abergavenny for his advice and support in getting started with this project