Four Lambeth gardens – Ruskin Park Community Garden, Trees for Cities Garden, Slade Green Adventure Playground, and Oasis Children’s Nature Garden – are among 80 places in the UK inviting people to discover food growing on Big Dig Day.
Meet your local garden
The saying goes that ‘gardening adds years to your life and life to your years’ and on Saturday 27 April you can drop in and meet people from your local community food garden. The day is for all fitness levels, if you want to get regularly involved in digging, planting, tending and harvesting or if you want to relax with like-minded people.
Veg Cities
Big Dig Day will also encourage people to eat more veg as part of the Veg Cities campaign. The four Lambeth gardens will be filled with family-friendly activities – seed sowing, garden tours, family games and craft activities with the opportunity to create new wildlife-friendly edible gardens, learn about permaculture and how to make plant feeds.
Word from the Cabinet
Cllr Sonia Winifred, Lambeth Council Cabinet Member for Equalities and Culture said: ““Gardening is always therapeutic, but growing healthy foodstuffs in a Lambeth community with the community coming together to create their own environment, is even better. This is a day to find out about amazing local projects and get involved.”
Bring people together
The day is organised by Capital Growth network, one of the world’s largest urban growing networks and part of Sustain, the food and farming charity. “For nearly 10 years we’ve seen first-hand how they bring together people of all ages and walks of life in nature, providing a sense of calm and ultimate feeling of wellbeing”, explained Sarah Williams, from Sustain who launched Big Dig Day in 2012. Thousands of people have joined in at local gardens, building friendships along the way.
For more information
- Big Dig Day first ran in London as part of Sustain’s Capital Growth network, which has supported over 3000 gardens since its launch. capitalgrowth.org.
- Now in its 8th year the Big Dig has grown to 12 areas. You can see gardens listed by area and on the map Any community garden of any size can register for free and there are over 55 gardens on the map.
- The Big Dig Day is part of the Sustainable Food Cities’ Veg Cities Campaign which is all about increasing the availability and consumption of vegetables in organisations ranging from schools and community groups to retailers and caterers. See vegcities.org
- For more aboutr growing food in Lambeth, contact Incredible Edible Lambeth
- For more about food-growing schemes on Lambeth estates, contact Urban Growth
