Castlefield Community Garden
You don’t need to be an experienced gardener to start a community garden. Find out how communities are using our Neighbourhood Investment Fund to get growing.
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Words from the video
“My name’s Gary. I am the founder and co-lead of Clean and Green Castlefield. We look after the community garden in Castlefield, next to the Castlefield Bowl. And this space is where the community come together. Where we grow vegetables, look after the gardens and just try to beautify Castlefield and look after the green spaces that we have.
I never set out to be a gardener. I've never really done gardening in my life. I joined Castlefield Forum and they asked me to have stewardship over the garden. This area was just left to be overgrown. There was large amounts of bamboo, grasses, bind weed. So, it was very unkempt.
What we've done now is planted a wildflower garden. We've got our herb gardens. We've now got our vegetable garden as well. We've just harvested some radishes, beetroots, tomatoes. And we've got some winter vegetables going in there as well. So, we've done a lot.
The vast majority of the funding we get to do all this comes from the Council and the Neighbourhood Investment Funds. The most recent, like, pot we've gotten has been able to get us the vegetable garden. And we've got a really good relationship with the neighbourhood officers and the councillors as well.
The collaboration with the Council is really key for us. It makes everything so much easier to plan and to execute as well. Castlefield has always been known as the sort of like the village in the city. Where people come along to enjoy [and] relax. And hopefully they come through some of the green spaces we look after – like the one here at the visitor centre garden.”