Woodbank is getting busy!

Potatoes at Woodbank

It’s been a busy few weeks at Woodbank Community Food Hub, with activity increasing as the season continues to roll on. There are still plenty of opportunities to get involved in too.

A couple of weeks ago we held a series of educational workshops on organic gardening, container growing and apple grafting with some really good attendance despite the weather! The morning session was pelted with snow and hail which completely covered the site, and had entirely disappeared by the time the afternoon’s participants arrived. Thankfully everyone managed to stay mostly dry and learned a lot of new skills which they can put to use at home. We also managed to raise some money, so thanks to everyone who donated for supporting our ongoing work at Woodbank.

Last Monday two new community garden volunteers joined our regulars and helped us to plant the first potatoes of the year: two beds of Robintas and Charlottes. We can’t wait to harvest them and get them on our veg stall in the summer - last year potatoes were understandably a best seller!

The maintenance and development crew will continue to dig a large new pond in order to improve the drainage on our often boggy site, and to provide a habitat for native plants and wildlife. We’ll also be picking some of the litter that often gets thrown over our fence. Our wellbeing groups will be running on Thursday and Friday, providing the therapeutic benefits of horticulture to people who may have become isolated during the past year’s lockdown.

On Saturday we hosted an all day drop-in bird box building workshop, where people came and practiced their carpentry skills and helped us to reach our target of building 100 bird boxes, giving homes to our many endangered species of birds, by building 30 boxes in one day - amazing! And again, thanks to all those who donated and bought veg off us at Woodbank that day, we were able to raise over £100 to keep our site running.

On the 15th May we have a really exciting day of workshops focusing on bees - Wildlife Friendly Gardening and Bee Hotel making session . Make sure to register as there are limited spaces! Also don't forget to check out our other Land Army dates, which happen every other week, where you can come and get your hands dirty and help us with maintaining our productive site. Head to our events page to register.

 

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