BOG has won the lottery! Our jackpot of almost £10,000 came in the form of a grant from the Big Lottery Fund’s Awards For All programme, a 20th birthday nest-egg that is already being ploughed into a dozen vital improvements in the community garden.Together they will provide an opportunity for a wider range of activities and greater efficiency in a number of jobs that are already being done. All this, together with the new toilet to replace the senile treebog, and the imminent arrival of chickens on the plot, both separately funded,

Bath

Organic Group

Autumn 2010

Lottery grantkick startsa new era

by February when the amphibians begin mating. (Cost £4,000)

Safer pathwaysAny time now three large pallets of

recycled metre square plastic panels will be delivered to the plot together with a load (5 cu m) of topsoil. This will signal the start of a frantic week-end (September 11-12) of activity to relay the main paths, making them safer, more weatherproof, and wheelchair accessible.

The pathway will also provide a wheelchair ramp to the new compost toilet.

A turf-cutter will first scalp off the turf which can be stacked to make loam. Then the interlocking panels will be laid, backfilled with topsoil, and sown with grass seed.

Within a very short period the paths will look exactly as they did before but with a firm and level foundation. (£2,000)

Earth ovenBOG will soon have an earth oven

just like the one at Broadlands. Liz Clarke will be building it, either just to the south of the children’s covered area or near the old greenhouse.

Restof thenewsThe big birthday party in pictures

How we got here — a

potted his-tory

Seeds: how to collect them and

swap them

Chickens come home

to roost

Simi bakes for Bath

mean that we are now start-ing a promising new chapter in the life of the garden — just reward for the hard work of the band of volunteers who turn up throughout the year to keep the place going.And because of those volun-teers doing a lot of the work involved in the changes, the capital cost of all the works will be covered by the grant.Here’s the plan:

The new pondThe original wildlife ponds, hand-

dug in 1997, are little more than overgrown puddles now, but all that will change when Steve Pritchard and a mini digger get to work ex-panding and joining them to creating one new pond.

There will be new staging and arrangements to make it easy and safe for groups of schoolchildren to use it for pond-dipping. It will also be a valuable contribution to the gar-den’s biodiversity.

Steve will be looking for volunteers to help with the work this autumn, so that the new pond can be completed

It will need to be covered to pre-vent the rain eroding the surface, but a plan to use some of the spare Onduline roofing which was left in the orchard has been vetoed be-cause those sheets have become a very successful nesting site for slow worms this summer. Other roofing materials are being sought.

Apart from the fun element the oven will help cut the £80 a year gas bill — though no-one is suggesting the oven will be lit every time some-one needs to boil a kettle. (£500)

Teaching tentA large (6x4 metres) polypropylene

frame tent with a door and windows is being bought to provide a tempo-rary classroom. It just fits between the bower and the shelter, and will be erected as required. (£500)

New equipmentThere are loads of tools in the

garden but not enough good quality ones.

Clapped out tools and equipment will be dumped and new stuff, includ-ing some personal protection equip-ment and new wheelbarrows, will be bought.

The clear out will also be an oppor-tunity to rationalise some of the stuff that has accumulated in the steel shed.(£500)

Apple pressA brand new apple press has

already been bought and is in use, replacing the original one which had developed a serious fault in the mechanism.

All is not lost with the old one how-ever. The group running the com-

Sue Kendall‘s impres-sion of what the new pond will look like

Continued on page 2

munity orchard in Broadmoor Lane, Weston, is paying for a repair to the old machine in exchange for occa-sional use of it.

The final cost of the new press was marginally more than the grant. (£500)

For training The garden has been around for

a long time now and so have a lot of the people we rely on to pass on knowledge to a new generation of

organic gardeners. This money will be spent to help pass on those mes-sages by running a course of instruc-tion.(£500)

Education aidsIdentification posters will be lami-

nated.(£264)

Members’ packThe cost of design and artwork for

a new pack. (£200)

Tables and chairsTwo trestle tables and 10 stacking

chairs. (£400)

Lottery grant details

One she made earlier: an earth oven by Liz Clarke, similar to the one we will have in the garden.

Continued from page 1

A very simplified (not to scale) idea of where the new elements will be in the garden. The earth oven could be sited near the greenhouse

Hooray for the new toilet. No longer a tree bog, this splendid new building - probably the larg-est on the plot, has all the facili-ties you could want with enough to spare for a very small barn dance, and it is fully accessible by wheelchair, or will be once the path to it is rebuilt.

That accessibility feature, means we will be free to get involved in many endeavours in the future which were pre-viously impossible. The new building and equipment was made possible by a significant grassroots grant from the Quar-tet Community Foundation.

Bill Brown’s dreams are com-ing true. Very soon there will be chickens in the garden, housed in a large brand new coop and run immediately behind the new composting toilet (they won’t mind).

The venture has been financed by Bill, who has held a torch for chickens ever since his family kept them as part of the wartime Dig for Victory campaign.

The chickens will probably be a mix of rescue chickens and bantams. Volunteers to check on the chickens and collect eggs will be recruited soon.

Accessible toeveryone

A dreamrealised

We are all history, but in a positive kind of way.

Using the Flickr website you can now see pictures from the past 20 years of BOG activities and spot the evolution of the gardens and the unchanging fashions of BOG regulars. One jacket seems to have been a constant presence throughout the 20 years — a fitting symbol of sustainability, and long may it continue.

Many of the pictures have little information and any help in adding to them would be use-ful. I have more to add and will scan and upload them one wet afternoon in the near future.

If you have photographs you’d like to add to the archive — you can have them back after scan-ning — or digital images that can be emailed, send them to me (Geoff Andrews) at the address on the next page. It’s best to subscribe to Flickr.com (which is both free and safe) and then go to Zagora1, but you can also search for Bath Organ-ic Group within the site.

Once upona time...

This year’s seed swap was its usual splendid affair with over 400 packets of

seed available to swap. Hopefully you will now put next

year’s event in your diaries but even more important than that is to get yourself organised now to save this year’s crop of seeds.

It is an easy and satisfying process and need not take up much space in your garden.

If you are new to seed saving and are wondering about the difficulties – remember peas, beans, lettuce and tomatoes are a doddle.

Carrots and beetroots are easy, but not until the summer after you didn’t eat them.

But don’t think you have to leave those half dozen leftover carrots in the middle of your best bed. They could be moved in the autumn to an out-of-the-way “going to seed” corner.

At the last Seed Swap 33 of you completed a questionnaire. The results were really interest-ing and useful.

Without exception you all en-joyed the event and the majority felt that February was the right time to hold it.

Interestingly, and rather sadly, only just over half said they routinely saved seeds. Sad because seed saving is so easy and satisfying.

As those successful crops come to an end, remember to leave enough seed to dry on the plants – there’s always peas and beans you’ve missed. That’s seed for next year and seed to swap – just remember to label it and keep it dry.

Also the number of packets of seeds brought to swap var-ied hugely from 65 to two. Sue and I think that we may need to introduce a slightly different sys-tem next year rather than the free-for-all we currently have.

If more people saved more kinds of seeds, each year there would be an even greater vari-ety on offer at the Swap.

Seeds, including unusual ones, were what was most appreciated about last year’s

event – followed a close sec-ond by meeting people, and a decent third by ‘cake’, always a Seed Swap feature.

If you have any comments about the Seed Swap we would

be delighted to hear them.So HAPPY SEED SAVING for

the rest of the summer.And put Sunday February 13 in your di-ary for next year’s seed swap.

Peter Andrews

Peter Andrews and Sue Kendall are offering

A SEED SAVING WORKSHOPTo help you on your way this autumn – come and

pick our brains.

Sunday 19th September at 2.30 Cost £2

(to include tea and cake)Venue: to be announced

For further information or to book your place phone Peter Andrews 01225 319117 or email info@eco-logicbooks.com

How to turn one ripe tomato into next year’s plants. Just don’t try it if it’s an F1 type. They don’t come true

Get ready now for the big swap

It might have been the weath-er — the only nice day in a cold wet bank holiday — though it is more likely that word is getting around that Growing Green is the best value day out for the May Bank Holiday week, but whatever the reason, this year’s event was the most successful ever raising £270 for our funds.

Next year’s event will be even better because of all the Lottery funded improvements.

Bath Area Gardenshare (BAGS) is no more.

The project to link people with unused garden space and those on the allotments waiting list didn’t take off in its second year as we had hoped, and in August it was agreed that we would close it.

BAGS was a co-operative effort between BOG, the allot-ments society and Transition Bath.

In 2009 about a dozen pair-ings were made and some of these will continue.

But newspaper publicity, a stall at the Ready, Get Set Grow event in February, and a stall at the Spring Flower Show produced little response. Everyone on the allotments waiting list was sent an email inviting them to get involved but it produced no effect.

So by late summer it had

become obvious that it had no long-term future, and Jane Yates and I, who had been running the scheme decided to wind it up.

A project by the two universi-ties to get gardeners to use the wilderness backgardens of student lets in Oldfield Park is in its early stages and John Lucas, who lives in the area was an early adopter.

Geoff Andrews

Half empty BAGS wrapped upGrowing Greengood value

It all began on January 6, 1990 when the first sods were cut somewhere near the east-ern border of the garden. Or did it?

Something like Bath Organic Group does not spring fully formed into life, it just grew – organically – out of ideas that had been in the air for some time.

John Brooks had been run-ning BLOB, Bath Local Organic Buyers for some time before-hand, selling organic produce froma nearby farm. From that a public meeting of people inter-ested in promoting the ideas of organic gardening was held. But perhaps that was just the conception and the birth re-ally was the day the first spade went into the ground, and that was on that dull January day in1990.

The plot at that time was a lot smaller than it is now, just the ground between the main entrance and the public path to Victoria Park. The allotment plots there had been left to go to weed because no-one was interested in cultivating them, and they were infested with couch grass and various other perennial and persistent weeds

that made cultivation in the beginning a long-running night-mare.

There was difference of opin-ion at that time (nothing chang-es) whether to compromise organic principles by using Glyphosate to clear the ground so that they could get the gar-den off to a flying start.

But short cuts were rejected in favour of hard slog and clear consciences, and very slowly the insurgent weeds were forced back over more and more of the territory. Not that they have gone away. Bill Brown points out some bind-weed that is still giving trouble:

‘Weeds are the professionals and we are the amateurs at this game. They never stop work-ing, and even now they are just waiting to take this space back. They never give up.’

The first cultivated plot was quite small, partly because of those weeds, and also because there were other pressing tasks, like clearing the eastern bound-ary and creating a hedge there.

Then, over the following years more and more of the plot came into cultivation and the first polytunnel was erected where the bower now is. Passing louts did their best to spoil the party by setting fire to it shortly after

and its salvaged ribs now forms the basis of the bower at the centre of the garden.

The western half of the gar-den had become a community orchard, but over time that was absorbed by BOG to create today’s rolling acres.

I was fairly new to Bath when all things ‘green, gardening and allotments’ came to be a newly cultivated interest. I joined the Bath Environment Centre as a volunteer

in April 1997 soon after I first started making sense of my new allotment on the Abbey Green site. All these interests meshed, and as time went on I realised

that many of the people interested in contributing to the care of the environment overlapped. I served on the Allotments Committee for a time, finding it bizarre that we should be discussing such earthy and mundane matters as potatoes and planting schemes in the august surroundings of the Guildhall.

But that is how Bath is, and as a new recruit to ‘growing’ I found myself marvelling that I should be sitting cross-legged on some rough ground off Victoria Park within sight of sublime classical archi-tecture, listening to a well-spoken young woman giving a group of us an idea of how she had set up her vegetable plot. She was trying to de-mistify it for us, and that was under the inspiration of an unas-suming person called Tim Baines.

That particular moment stuck with me, because I realised that anyone who has a mind to, could try cultivating plants. The Bath Or-ganic Garden took shape, steadily being developed by volunteers co-opted and quietly enthused by Tim and others. I can’t name them all, because I wasn’t a regular then. I know I turned up once while the ground was being cleared of its virulent crop of grass and weeds. I was amused by a veteran called Bill, holding up a long strand of couch grass and declaring : ‘This is War!’

I noted how it progressed, and visited from time to time. The Environment Centre, where I volun-teered, shifted from Milsom Street to South Vaults, Green Park Station, and eventually it became Envolve. Our links continued, and somehow permaculture, green groups and BOG were intertwined.

BOG members had a stall on some

How we got here

cutting a long story very short

Tim’s photo of the first day on the plot in Janu-ary 1990, and 20 years later, the three prime movers today, Bill Brown, John Brooks and Tim Baines, photo-graphed by Simi Rezai at the birthday party in June

And some personal recollections of that journey from Verona Bass

The tea tent at the first Growing Green in 1997, the year Verona joined BOG — it rained a lot Continued on page 6

Our beautiful birthday party

A tropical sunny day, sensational food, good music from Gabrielle — if you weren’t at the BOG party in June you missed a great event, but you can recapture it all in pictures and vid-eo on the CD that Simi and Serpil made, for just £2.50 — and boost our funds at the same time

Saturdays under the arches of Green Park Station, when the first Farmers’ Market became estab-lished. Bath Environment Centre pioneered Farmers Markets, under the management of Sarah May.

At the organic garden space real progress was made when the ‘tree bog’ was constructed. It was dif-ficult to manage without a toilet nearby. The group who worked on this made a big contribution to the well-being of the people who came. Again, this was leading the way. Compost toilets are accepted more readily now.

I remember how good it felt when the orchard was first planted. By now I was more involved on a practical basis. There was some-thing viable here; I enjoyed the company and had meanwhile also picked up practical experience as a Wwoofer (World-Wide Opportuni-ties on Organic Farms).

There was a moment I was reprimanded by Tim for exposing the roots of saplings, before we were ready to put them in the soil. ‘ Of all people YOU should know! ‘ Indeed I should have done, and I’ve been meticulous ever since. We may be laid-back but we are ‘plantspeople’, and we nurture them. It’s a craft, a passion.

There’s an enthusiasm in work-ing together and being actively

engaged with soil and plants, which I have rarely encountered elsewhere. I also like the way that we mend and make do with recy-cled things. All sorts of discarded stuff, useful and otherwise, finds its way there, in the guise of being a donation.

The rough willow and tarpaulin shelter was an important bit of improvisation, and it has since become a hub where people hang out and chat over tea and cake. Always there is emphasis on the ritual of tea, the bonding mechanism of the nation, to which foreigners have to be introduced willy-nilly.

There have been all sorts of in-teresting cultural cross-overs with temporary workers. Often children are found messing about with watering cans or doing their own thing, being tolerated.

Schoolchildren are encouraged and given a chance to explore in structured workshops. The Square Meal Project [May 2008] was an attempt to enthuse the public to get growing with food shortages looming.

The Roots Theatre group put on a show in 2009 using the BOG garden as their set, imagining life in the future, and the past, with ‘cultivation’ of one sort or another being crucial to man’s survival.

There is a convivial Seed Swap meeting in February; there is the

annual Growing Green Day on the first Bank Holiday in May.Increasingly it felt that BOG was a fraternity to which I be-longed. It had its highs and lows.

Some time ago Tim became dis-enchanted when it seemed that he was always the central refer-ence point for questions. He felt that it was a ‘Community Gar-den’ and more people ought to take responsibility. He tried to move on in order to facilitate this.

Of course, many of us have seen that he takes on more projects, [eg. Broadlands orchard, and the old University Research station or ‘The Bathampton ‘Lost’ Plot] and he enthuses yet more people in that quietly determined way of his.

I don’t know at what point Peter Andrews became Chairman, but his genial leadership has done a lot to maintain the notion of BOG and the running of the garden.

There are many people who could be named as crucial in the setting up and the development of this little oasis near Victoria Park just off a busy main route into Bath.

I hope that they will all be ac-knowledged one way or another. The ethos of this special com-munity garden is that it is all-inclusive and that everyone has a role. I believe it is a symbol of the zeitgeist of our times, and it has indeed become a Demonstration Garden.

Continued from page 4

Recollections by Verona Bass

Community garden matters:Tim Baines28 Ashley Avenue, BA1 3DS01225 312116timjbaines@yahoo.co.uk

Membership/rotas/visitsSheila Blethyn9 Winsley RoadBradford on Avon BA15 1QR01225 866150sheilablethyn@yahoo.co.uk

Trading hut/farmers’ marketPauline Magrath8 Beech AvenueBath BA2 7BA01225

Not the chairPeter Andrews19 Maple Grove, BA2 3AF01225 319117zen20627@zen.co.uk

Newsletter and picture archiveGeoff Andrews30 Oldfield roadBathBA2 3NF01225 484422g.andrews@mac.com

September 4 Farmers’ market

Trading Hut clearance sale See the advert on page

September 7 Development Group meeting Community garden 11.00

September 11-12 Path relaying Work group replaces paths throughout the garden

September 19 Seed-saving workshop 2.30 See the back page for details

September 26 Harvest meal Community Garden 1.00 — bring food to share

October 2 Farmers’ market

October 9 Development Group meeting Community garden 11.00

October 23 Apple Day at the Farmers’ market

Events to be arranged.

November 6 Farmers’ market

November 9 Development Group meeting Community garden 11.00

November 27 BOG AGM St Mark’s Community Cen-tre* 1.00 - 3.30 —bring food to share

December 4 Development Group meeting Community Garden 11.00

December 18 Christmas farmers’ market

February 20 Seed swap Sunday 2.00 at St Mark’s Commu-nity Centre* – bring seeds and cake to share. See the back page

* St Mark’s Community Centre is in St Mark’s Road, Widcombe, a three minute walk from the bus station.

Time to give Sheila a handFor years Sheila Blethyn has been or-ganising the rota of co-ordinators for the Tuesday and Saturday sessions at the gar-dens. When no-one is avail-able she steps in and does it herself — re-gardless of the incon-venience and the 20 mile round trip from her home.Recently that has hap-pened far more fre-quently, and Sheila would really appreci-ate some new volun-teers taking on the job from time to time. It’s not onerous, you meet some really nice people, and you’ll be helping one of our staunchest workers. CALL HER NOW.

Bog member Simi Rezai has just started a small business baking seasonal cakes and teaching Persian, vegetarian and gluten- free cookery class-es.

The courses are held either in Simi’s own kitchen in Great Pulteney Street or in your own home.

And if you need a really fabu-lous cake for your party, book club, school, or office, Simi’s Kitchen will deliver to you in central Bath.

Regulars at the community garden know Simi’s prowess with cakes well but you can also buy Simi’s Kitchen cakes in Tea Time Cafe (opposite train sta-tion), in the cafe in St Michael’s Church, at Prior Park Garden Centre Cafe, and in The Kiosk by the Lake, Prior Park (NT).

When they are available Simi buys fresh fruit & vegetables from the BOG garden to use in the courses and the cakes.

She says: ‘Iranian cooking uses very simple ingredients which are treated individually before being brought together in the dish. The cooking methods are simple, slow cooking where the flavours have a chance to mingle and infuse together.

‘Almost all dishes can be served with or without meat.’

She offers special discounts for BOG members.

Please call or email Simi for cakes, courses or to share your recipe on:

Address: 10 Great Pulteney Street | Bath | BA2 4BR

Telephone: 01225 789 554Mobile: 07814 704 799Email: simi@simiskitchen.

co.uk Web: www.simiskitchen.co.uk

Dig out your veg recipesSimi is also collecting recipes

for distribution with the sale of produce at the Saturday mar-ket.

the idea is that customers will be able to use the produce to create more adventurous dish-es, and it will make life easier for volunteers who are often asked advice. Next Saturday Market is 4 September.

Top tips for Co-ordinators

Here is a checklist of things you need to know before your first duty:

1.Bring your Mobile Phone.2.Bring 1 litre of semi-skimmed milk (organic if possible ), biscuits or cake. Assume 10 helpers.

Tea, coffee, sugar, squash are in the Tin shed.

3.Open the gate to the lane. If you don’t have a key make sure someone (usually Pauline) will be around to unlock it for you

4. Unlock sheds.5.WELCOME NEW VOLUN-TEERS AND VISITORS.

6.Get helpers to sign in the garden diary.

7. Allocate jobs. (or delegate ) Help newcomers to do their job with the help of an expe-rienced volunteer.

8.Make tea about 11(kettle takes 20 mins to boil)

9. Take some tea and cake to the trading hut when open.

10. Make sure everyone takes a share of the produce.

11.Wash up (or delegate )12. Check garden for tools. Sort into place, in shed.

Turn off gas!13.Lock up both sheds, re-place keys in correct places.

General informationMembership forms are in the steel shed in a plastic box.

First Aid box is also in that shed

Tip up chairs against the rain.A BIG THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR HELP TODAY.

Tim 312116 • Sheila 866150 • Pauline 464697 • Kate 311699

The Christina Noble Children’s Foundation is an international partnership serving under-privileged children to help them achieve their potential. In Viet-nam and Mongolia they con-centrate on protecting children at risk of economic and sexual exploitation, providing basic care and educational opportuni-ties. The programmes include: emergency and long-term medi-cal care, nutritional rehabilita-tion, educational and vocational training and job placement. This is accomplished within the con-text of the family and the com-munity whenever possible.

When Bob Cottle, Pauline Magrath‘s brother, and a veter-an BOG member, died in 2006 he left a legacy to the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation. Four years later that gift has been turned into a kindergarten for the children of a deprived village in Vietnam.Phuong Thinh is a remote poorcommune in the Dong Thap Province, a densely populated

Phuong Thinh kindergarten under construction in 2009

agricultural area separated bycanals.It had only an old two class-room school, so many of its 750 children aged 1-5 were denied pre-school education and many others travelled long distances to school in neighbouring com-munes. Even those who managed to find a space in the existing school had to brave frequent flooding of the building . Because of the poverty throughout the region many young children were left to fend for themselves during the day while parents sought agricul-tural work.To meet this challenge, the Foundation undertook to con-struct two classrooms complete with toilets, kitchen, electricity, plumbing, fencing, courtyard and equipment to accommo-date an estimated 100 children aged 3-5 years old. This was completed in Febru-ary 2010.Pauline would very much like to continue this connection through a BOG activity, with the proceeds going directly to the children of the kindergarten and welcomes any suggestions.

Christina Noble Children’s Foundation

End of season

clearance sale

Every Saturday in Sept 10am to 12noon at the Trading HutComposts and fertilisers 20% dis-count, everything else 10%Produce table for surplus fruit and veg.

You know her cakes, now learn howto make them

A legacy that is making a long term difference