Celebrating Communities Week with Incredible Edible Ulverston

This week is #CommunitiesWeek2019, and we think this is an important week to celebrate not just the community work across our network, but also the supportive communities we see form and bring together wider communities around food, farming and the environment.

From Cornwall all the way up to Scotland, Incredible Edible groups are doing extraordinary work, supporting not just more food growing, but bringing together teams of people to create change in their villages, towns and cities.

A great example of this is Incredible Edible Ulverston, who along with Ulverston In Bloom have worked with a collaborative team on a planting project in one of the towns car parks after the Environment Agency had carried out work to enclose an underground stream which was causing flooding to local houses. The local authorities, county, parish and town, asked the groups to suggest planting ideas for some large planters that had been added to the car park area. When the groups asked for trees and shrubs that were wildlife friendly, rowan, crab apples and guelder rose, the authorities made sure that it was these species that were planted as central plants in the planters. The groups then applied for some funding from a local business, who gave them funds to fill four planters with pollinator rich planting and 2 further planters with herbs, strawberries and nasturtiums. Each planter has been given a sign so everyone knows what is happening and later in the year bulbs will be added for early pollinators looking for forage. The groups have focused on perennial planting for these containers and they are proving very popular in the town, making a previously dull space more interesting.

Across the UK and worldwide there are Incredible Edible groups bringing organisations together in order to support a kinder world and to regenerate areas where nature is depleted, bringing back not just food for people, but forage for pollinators and homes for wildlife. Often traditionally these spaces would have been completely without anything natural but by being trusted partners, Incredible Edible teams are supporting a change and edible landscaping is becoming a conversation that seems les frightening to the more traditional organisations.

Maybe you’d like to tell us your story of collaboration? Get in touch through our website, (www.incredibleedible.org.uk) and let us tell your tale!