Growing Awareness

It may be premature to suggest the Growzones project is going viral, but the idea is beginning to have a life of its own when it comes to publicity.

I’ve often observed that when one’s children start school you become less of a parent and more of an administrator. Almost without fail, when you arrive at school in the morning or do the pickup in the afternoon, you are handed reams of paper that have varying degree of interest - school trips, clubs, PTA news, head lice found - again! These notes tend to generate more recycling than revelation.

One morning recently a note was placed into my hand which took me by surprise because on it was a picture of my family and our garden, proudly flanked by some of our EarthAbbey friends. ‘I was reading a magazine at work,’ said the delivering parent, ‘and staring out from the pages was you and your daughter, so I thought you might like to see it.’ She was right, it was a delight to see us all, and to be reminded how our garden was transformed one spring by a Grow Zones team. Where there was once some overgrown, unproductive bushes, there is now a cherry tree, raspberry canes, blackberries, a carpet of strawberries and a couple of miniature apple trees.

The article in question first appeared earlier this year on the Church of England’s Shrinking the Footprint website. But it has recently been picked up and re-run in a magazine produced by the National Society of Allotment & Leisure Gardeners (Allotment and Leisure Gardener’s Magazine). Unfortunately, there isn’t an online link to the magazine, but if you would like to read the full article as it first appeared, the it can be found here: Shrinking the Footprint. Alternatively, there is an excellent video on the Growzones homepage.

To whet your appetite, BBC Gardening presenter Alys Fowler is quoted as saying: “At last, an easy to use guide on how to get a community group up and running. This is a brilliant resource for anyone who wants to gather some like-minded people together to get gardening. Now all you have to do is get out there and garden!”

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