Breaking Ground at our Community Garden and Gearing up for the Orchard Planting

Today the Sustainability Team joined forces with the School of Architecture, James Hallybone and Tom Barnsley from Roundfield and Michael Unsworth from the Grounds team to break ground at the site for our new community garden. We haven’t quite started to dig to plant yet but we have dug one meter below the surface to inspect the soil and get an idea of what the quality is like.

Ducan Goodwin gets into the hole to investigate the soil

So what’s it like then I hear you cry? Well, just below the surface there is a fair bit of rubble – not too much though, then after that there’s some well drained soil a few pebbles and gravel and then the clay. The School of Architecture first year garden design student will returning to the site to do some more robust testing over the coming weeks but certainly the first look is positive. The soil may not be of an award winning standard it is certainly good enough that we can get a bit of compost mixed in and start digging and planting when the time is right.

Looking at the different layers in soil

We are now looking for students, staff members and locals who are interested in getting their hands dirty and getting involved with either the design, building of, maintenance and growing in the garden. If you are interested please email: sustainability@greenwich.ac.uk

Sticking with the theme of growing your own, we are just one month away from our orchard planting at the Avery Hill Campus. On the 1st December this year we will be planting 20 trees including ten varieties of apple, three varieties of pear, two plum trees, two cherry trees, a damson, a medlar and a mulberry tree. The orchard will need staff and students to adopt a tree for watering, pruning and a little bit of care, particularly for the first two years. Not to worry if you don’t have any experience in managing orchards for the London Orchard Project will be offering a training session telling you exactly how to look after a tree through its early years. Once again if you want to be involved in the planting of and adoption of one of our trees please email us at: sustainability@greenwich.ac.uk

Seeing as its Halloween this Monday we have a few little interesting links that we’ve noticed come up today. Firstly over at Planet Pals they have a nearly endless supply of ideas for a green Halloween: http://planetpals.com/green-halloween and Creations by Kara have come up with a great way of recycling an old book into a pumpkin that you will be ablt to use year after year: http://www.creationsbykara.com/2011/09/book-page-pumpkin-tutorial.html

Creation by Kara: Pumpkin book

P.S. Don’t forget to turn the bottles of sloe gin you made last week!

Community Food Garden Plans Afoot at Avery Hill

Today the Sustainability Team ventured up to the Mansion Site of Avery Hill to meet with Robert Holden and the Garden and Landscape Design staff at the School of Architecture and Construction. The topic under discussion was the plans for building a University community food garden. The project will be collaboration between the three schools at Avery Hill (Architecture, Education and Health) and staff and students who work and live on the campus to create a space where they can grow fruit, vegetables, herbs, salads and whole manner of delicious treats.

Statue in the Winter Gardens at Avery Hill Mansion Site

With assistance and advice from Capital Growth and the Greenwich Co-Operative Development Agency the plans are afoot to create a space that will not only provide food but could also double up as an outdoor learning space, social area and a sensory and medicinal garden. Using inspiration from the ideas of permaculture design we are hoping to reuse and upcycle a number of items located around the campus including tyres, pallets and an unused gazebo.

The garden will be set-up on the Southwood Site, just south of the sports hall which is also where the university is planning on planting an orchard later this year. The orchard is being designed by the London Orchard Project who are trying to create a ‘fruit tree revolution’ in London by promoting the virtues of home grown fruit and planting new community orchards all across the capital. We have earmarked the 1st December as the day to start the tree planting and will be hoping to round up a good few staff and students to get stuck in and involved with the planting.

When the orchard is planted it will not be the only source of fruit on campus as the sustainability team has discovered over the past 18 months there is already a lot of fruit hidden away in the nooks and crannies of Avery Hill. Exploring the campus you can find mulberries, blackberries, crab apples, sloes, quince, damsons, plums and as we discovered today even grapes!

Greedy Green Gnome’s Greenwich Green Grapes

The other discovery of the day – and almost as exciting as the grapes – was the website wordle.net. This website converts a body of text into a graphically delightful jumble of multi coloured words. Just look at what it has done to the University’s Sustainability Targets.


University of Greenwich Sustainability Strategy