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Okehampton Community Garden Uncategorized

Our Beautiful Community Garden

Our community garden is situated along Fatherford Lane with an amazing view of Dartmoor.  It’s a space where you can find inner peace and tranquility sitting at the picnic tables in the wildflower garden or in front of the Heart Space, or the benches dotted around the fruit and veg garden, where you can pass the time, watching the birds and bees, soaking in the view.  To enjoy the tranquility of the garden there is no need to become a member.    

Our lovely tea hut, The Heart Space. On a sunny day it is such a beautiful spot to sit and soak in the stunning view of Dartmoor.
Our picnic area has expanded
The captivating view from the Heart Space

Bring a Picnic, let the kids play.

We can boast to having the only outdoor sandpit in Okehampton and the children love it so much we had to make it bigger!  Along with the mud kitchen and playhouse there is plenty to keep the little ones entertained while you relax with friends.  A wonderful way to while away time on a sunny afternoon.

Our sandpit is so popular that we had to make it bigger, now it’s big enough to bury your mates!
A lovely space for the kiddos! There’s always toys for the sandpit and stuff in the Wendy house to keep the little ones amused.
Our play area was kindly sponsored by Okehampton United Charities and help from “Who Let The Dad’s Out?” (The sandpit is kept covered to protect it from cats) The mud kitchen is quite a hit too!
We have raised beds for children to get involved in a spot of gardening too, always under adult supervision.
Checking out some bugs they found!

Joining the team, what to expect.

We have a growing membership team of volunteers who enjoy being involved in the gardening, running the wonderful events and projects; we regularly hold workshops and events that support wellbeing.  The Heart Space is where our volunteers enjoy getting together, planning, and sharing ideas to enhance the community garden.

Volunteering in the community garden – tending the garden and growing fruit and veg to sell back to the local community. Work includes digging, watering, weeding, maintenance of the garden, growing and caring for the plants, and picking the produce when ready – including potatoes, runner beans, onions, broad beans, and soft fruit.  We run a fair share scheme, so work is rewarded in produce. 

We try to be sustainable and eco-friendly, keeping our carbon footprint as low as possible. We accept all ages and abilities, without discrimination.

Planting trees donated by the Woodland Trust, a great team of volunteers got 100 trees planted in a couple of hours. Fortunately, we had a lovely sunny November morning to make the work fly by!
The little people helped us mulch the trees after they were planted.
Everyone gets a share of the food harvested. We have a couple of volunteers who make jam using the produce from the garden.

How to get involved

We meet up three times a week, you are welcome to come along to one of our community gardening sessions, currently held on Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday between 11am – 2pm. 

Become a full member and you will have unlimited access and may drop in any time you fancy doing a spot of gardening. 

To find out more or to join the mailing list, contact us on okehamptoncommunitygarden@gmail.com

With lots of raised beds, an established area with fruit bushes and our newly planted wildflower area, an established orchard and pretty flower beds. The community garden is really beginning to take shape. We welcome new volunteers, just drop in to one of our sessions to find out more.
Okehampton Community Garden Uncategorized

The Geodesic Dome

This has been a fun little project to do. It took us a couple of goes, but we got there in the end!

The first layer was easy!
Then a few more people got involved, and things started to get complicated!
Then the ‘Sisterhood’ got together and put the dome up in no time at all!
It adds a bit of interest in the garden, it’s going to look lovely when it’s all filled up with plants.
Okehampton Community Garden Uncategorized

Show The Love Campaign – Green Hearts

The Climate Coalition set up a campaign to show how many people share the desire to see action to tackle climate change and protect nature. #ShowTheLove – Green Hearts campaign has been growing for 10 years, to find out more and how to get in involved go to theclimatecoalition.org

Thanks to Fran Rickwood for coordinating our lovely group of volunteers to make the Green Hearts to go up around Okehampton. We think they look super, well done ladies.

The ladies get busy in the Heart Space creating the green hearts
The hearts look great with the light behind them
These are going to look great around the town, keep an eye out for them.
Okehampton Community Garden Uncategorized

Donating

We are often asked “how can we donate?” Well, we have just made it easier! Follow the link to our PayPal page https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=PF22RN2MFFPG8 

We currently have numerous projects running at the garden.

We hold regular well-being sessions, such as Tai Chi, Meditation, and Sound Baths. We try to raise funds to help keep the cost down for participants who may struggle to access regular exercise and relaxation classes.

We have recently secured funding to help us run a community lunch project. We offer a simple home-cooked meal, such as soup, and warm space where people can socialise. The aim is help people struggling with the cost of living and those who live alone, helping to combat social isolation and loneliness. We currently have 14 people joining us for lunch every Wednesday. We would like to continue this; as long as we have the funds we can provide a free lunch.

We have a holiday hunger project that we are running in conjunction with All Together Okehampton. During the summer holidays we helped feed 40 children, and hope to help at Christmas by providing a Christmas hamper, with enough food to help families enjoy their Christmas Day. 

We organise various workshops and activities throughout the year. Previously we have had willow weaving workshops, storytelling workshops, arts and crafts for young children, crystal workshops, drumming circles, and coffee mornings. 

We do have some larger projects in the pipeline.

We have funding to construct a geodesic dome, like a mini Eden Project dome in a corner of the garden.

After receiving funding from the National Lottery, we started to create an area in the garden for our wellbeing activities. Having got the basics done, we now hope to develop this area, some of the ideas include a labyrinth and wild flower area. Waitrose and Partners have recently made a contribution and fundraising is ongoing for this project.

We welcome any size of donation and if you feel you would like to make a regular contribution, you can do that too!

Okehampton Community Garden Uncategorized

Gratitude

We began 2021 with great deal of optimism. With life slowing down and changing in unexpected ways during 2020, some people discovered the community garden for the first time, and were pleasantly surprised by what goes on right on their doorstep. This encouraged us to apply for some funding to help us extend our offer. Writing funding applications has never been a strong point and we are extremely grateful to everyone who has funded us in the past.

National Lottery Community Fund

Thanks to funding from National Lottery Community Fund we created a ‘secret garden’ for our well-being activities and upgraded our toilet facility.

Devon County Council

We received funding from DCC to help us run more Covid-safe outdoor activities in the garden. We have also secured funds to set up a gardening club for families starting in 2022. We believe that when we are connecting with nature, it truly helps our mental health, and that can have such a positive impact on our physical well-being too. While engaging young people with healthy food production we hope that we can do our little bit to help alleviate some of the food poverty we are seeing locally while connecting children actively with the environment.

Okehampton United Charities

Who let the Dad’s out helped us with some fundraising to help make the garden more child friendly, Okehampton United Charities provided funds for picnic tables, a sandpit, outdoor games and a beautiful mud kitchen.

Devon Community Foundation

Devon Community Foundation have helped us purchase items, such as a gazebo, that will help us promote the activities at the garden and generate a revenue stream to enable us to continue beyond the funding, as well as help us develop our programme of well-being activities. We have signed up as an activity provider with the Children’s University so children participating in the scheme can get their passport signed when they attend our activities.

Great Western Railway

Okehampton has been campaigning for the reinstatement of the railway line to Exeter for the past 20 years. In 2019 GWR announced that we were going to get the line reinstated. In 2021 the line opened and carried the first passenger train from Okehampton to Exeter in October 2021. We were thrilled to bits when we were informed that our funding application to purchase a new tractor mower had been approved. The mower arrived just before Christmas. We had previously been donated a second hand ride on mower which wasn’t really up to the job as the area of grass at the community garden is quite extensive. We had replaced the cutter deck in 2020 so the mower was in better condition than when we received it and so we decided to donate to someone who would appreciate having it as much as we did. The mower was donated to Wishtree Permaculture project.

Literature works

We are really please to announce our partnership with Literature Works and Katy Cawkwell, to bring a free storytelling workshop to the garden. Katy is brilliant and truly brings a story to life. Thanks to this funding we are holding one workshop and two Blaze sessions, where people have an informal, relaxed platform to practice what they learned in Kay’s workshop.