About the project
We maintain two sites in Philips Park; a fruit garden and a nursery We meet at our ‘office’ behind the Philips Park barn most Saturdays at 10.15am and work on one, or both, of the sites for a couple of hours. We are represented on the board of the Community Intertest Company (CIC) that has recently taken over the barn, and our work in the park will develop in partnership to our mutual benefit.
Philips Park is also the location of Incredible Edible’s Apple Day held in October every year.
In 2017 we plan to add new raised beds to provide a children’s area to encourage more families to volunteer. There is plenty of opportunity for new volunteers to help and including providing ideas on how to develop the site.
Fruit Garden
Over the past six years we have transformed the abandoned former fruit garden set up by the Philips family more than a century ago. We have large areas of raspberries, currant and gooseberry bushes and some thriving rhubarb plants. We also have plum, fig, apricot and nectarine trees against a wall, a healthy medlar tree and a couple of stepover apple trees.
We have been enlarging the herb bed on the site recently and will complete it in spring 2017.
Nursery
A couple of years ago, the Trust for Conservation Volunteers left the park and we inherited a substantial part of the nursery that they had been maintaining. This area has the potential to provide us with different crops each year in sufficient quantities to help out community cafes or develop a relationship with a local veg outlet. It is also a good site to run courses, like the apple grafting course we ran early in 2016.
