The BBC featured two Prestwich parks last week. On Thursday a journalist from North West Tonight visited Philips Park and filmed volunteers working on the Incredible Edible Prestwich and District (IEPAD) fruit garden and on Saturday Radio Manchester’s Manhunt programme solved cryptic clues to find their way to St Mary’s Park and meet our volunteers there.
They were drawn to the parks because Incredible Edible Prestwich & District took part in The Big Dig: Greater Manchester’s Edible Gardens Open Day. Nationally, the Big Dig aims to provide training and advice to over 5,000 community food volunteers and get another 5,000 new volunteers active over the next year.
The events held across Greater Manchester last Saturday formed the first of three ‘Big Dig’ days. There will be a volunteering day in March 2013 and the Big Dig Harvest in September 2013. The organisation aims to attract people who haven't volunteered before and to involve them in creating vibrant community food gardens, which can provide fresh, healthy food and put pride into communities.
In Philips Park IEPAD has nearly finished the huge task of clearing the site. A good turnout of volunteers last Saturday enabled us to concentrate more on looking after the fruit we have planted. We began the task of wiring up raspberries and weeded and tidied up our herb bed, strawberry bed and currant bushes. All this accompanied by the usual lively discussion about how to get the best harvest next year!
In St Mary’s Park we were out with a display, bunting and a batch of new seeds and plants. We talked to lots of lovely people who came for advice, to find out what we were up to or even to lend a hand with planting. Emma from the Manhunt Programme followed this cryptic clue to find us:
I like my trousers neat and flat,
they should have seen an iron
Oct 31 is their night
when broomsticks they do fly on
Quite contrary? say 'halo' Eh?
56 Dig this now
From ground to mouth all gobbled down,
this is such a big wow!
By the end of the morning the beds were tidy and packed with new edibles.
The Big Dig organisers dropped in to both gardens for a chat as part of their tour of all the Manchester gardens in the project. We expect to see them again on November 10th when FeedingManchester plan to hold an all-day event at the Creative Living Centre in Prestwich to encourage food growing projects and local food business here and across Greater Manchester.