Hi fellow Community Engagers,
Here’s the latest news from my placement with Portglenone Green Gym.
Saturday 12th May saw the official opening of the Green Gym Shop on Portglenone Main Street. We toyed with various names, but we decided we should just call it what everyone will inevitably end up calling it anyway!
We have teamed up with Ballymena Fairtrade, meaning we have bought a whole range of fairly-traded produce into Portglenone, where previously such things were pretty hard to come by.
We will also be selling plants and vegetables grown on our Green Gym sites, and supporting other local growers and craftspeople. We have a six month trial, so we’ll be doing everything we can to make the shop and invaluable part of the community!
Of course the aim is to raise money for Portglenone Green Gym, but my big hope is that we can use the shop to raise awareness about the work of the Green Gym, and hopefully encourage more volunteers.
The Green Gym does have a good presence in Portglenone, particularly at events, for example the recent Bluebell Festival that we helped to organise in Portglenone Forest. However, I think most people are stillsa little bit mystified by what we do, and this is something I really want to address.
Part of the problem is that we work at several different sites, doing very different things at each one, so a single unifying message is hard to come up with!
Having said that, there have been some good “engagement” opportunities lately. At the Bluebell Festival I ran a little stall called “Plant a seed, grow a plant”, which was as simple as it sounds! Pots, trowels, a big bag of compost and some fun seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, courgette, french bean, carrot)… the kids came and planted their seed, and took it away to grow at home,along with a simple factsheet telling them how to care for it. I’m hoping our popularity was a result of genuine enthusiasm, not the fact we had a covered stall on a day full of downpours!
Apart from that, lots of sowing and planting has been going on. And not just vegetables!
We are building a relationship with a local sheltered housing complex, who have extensive gardens, but not really the resources to manage them…. we, on the other hand are very keen to have more land to work on! The manager of the complex is quite open to ideas, so as well as helping her maintain her flowerbeds, we are also trying to increase the sustainability and wildlife value of the place. We have just sown an area of wildflowers, planted some potatoes, and are planning compost bays and possibly willow sculptures…. and they will still have acres of lawn to play with!
For some reason the potato planting resulted in me being the world’s muddiest person, but I think the local population have now got used to seeing a strange, muddy “wee English girl” wandering about the town!
The majority of our volunteers have special needs, and they are rightly proud of their Green Gym- the list of things that have been achieved this year is already very long, and the fact that so many of our volunteers have stayed committed to the project for so long just shows how much they value their involvement.