Newlina Eco-Gardens Community Wild Garden Project

Aim

The Wild Garden Project will be a beautiful edible garden with facilities for visitors to come to forage, learn and enjoy fun Eco-Events.

Newlina  Eco-Gardens, at St Newlyn East is a Social Enterprise growing Food eco-logically in polytunnels and outdoors. We are creating a venue here to offer inspiring Eco-Education sessions about our green ways of growing and all sorts of other things too- like outdoor cooking and eco-arts.
                       

We are planting up a Wild Garden full of useful and edible plants to inspire people to grow "green",  using wilder species, sustainable to grow in our Cornish Climate. Here's a sketch of the Wild Garden as we envision it...

We have been growing food eco-logically here for 11 years and we already have the beginnings of a Wild Garden with little woods, hedgerows and hedgehogs and a thriving community of birds, bats, bees and beneficial bugs helping us.

Crowd-funding will help us create a place for our human community to come to workshops about green ways to grow food and, we hope, to grow themselves in a peaceful and inspiring place.

We reckon it really boosts our well-being to just sit by the fire, cook up some freshly foraged veg and enjoy the birdsong or even the harp music...

With £12,000 we can keep investing in our wild planting with more fruit and nut trees and nutritious natives, provide an Outdoor Kitchen, Compost Loo and a temporary shelter in the Wild Garden. If we can raise more then we will build a wooden cabin so it will be more weather proof. The facilities will benefit anyone who wants to come to our events, including our free monthly Wild Garden Group.

Who are we? We are Paul and Laura Salmon and we run Newlina Eco-gardens with an amazing team of Helpers, trainee Eco-Gardeners and our growing Wild Garden Group.  Paul is the head gardener here and he  has dedicated the past 11 years to growing sustainable local food and it's inspiring to hear and see all he has learnt. He spent the previous 9 years training in Permaculture, conservation and apprenticed with an organic gardener  before he started growing here.

Paul and Mireille settling the courgettes in.

Laura harvesting nettles for fertilizer.

Laura is qualified as a Playworker and Forest School Leader and is also a Story-teller.   Her "Wild Stories" Project is part of the Social Enterprise activities to raise funds and offer insights into human relationships with nature. She also runs Eco-Arts sessions alongside this, exploring stories through natural materials, percussion, puppet-making etc.

Here's what people have said to support what we are doing;

• Tom at Scarlet Hotel said, "It can only be good for Cornwall.... the sooner we are educating our children about where, " food, "comes from... the better."
• Adey at Bedruthan Steps says it, " is possibly the best produce I have ever used."
• Andy at Fifteen Cornwall "It's consistent and... its Cornish which is important to our ethos."
• Children, after a visit to the Eco-Gardens said "I love this place and I love the teachers" and "I love to watch the plants grow."
• Nicky, who is Manager at Newlyn East Pre-school, after an Eco-Education Session said "It really covered a huge range of education using the natural environment..."
• Pip from GlasneyGreenspace Regeneration Project said, " Laura has such a wonderful way of creating a ...gateway between the imagination and the natural environment."
• Bekah, a worker here said "I learn something new every week."
• Corinne from our local shop said, "looking at Newlina Eco-Gardens to supply our local veg for us is fantastic. It's supporting a local business and... the environment."
• Lucy from Cornish Food Box Company said, "having a space at Newlina where people can learn about how food is produced...is...really important."

Thank you for your support.

This project successfully funded on 15th August 2016