Community fridge helps residents grow their own
Hove based, Weald Allotment Community Fridge, has been delivering 'mini allotments' to local residents to help them grow their own food. Their innovative food delivery system hopes to lift spirits as well as give people access to fresh organic produce.
Credit: Weald Allotment. Picture shows Beba Watts-Emirali, aged ten, with a mini-allotment. Beba has been helping her mother out at the Weald allotment site during lockdown.
The Weald Allotment Community Fridge has been supplying supermarket produce, combined with fresh allotment produce, to households across the city of Brighton and Hove since 4 April 2020. With a team of volunteer deliverers, the Community Fridge delivers food bags to anybody who requests one, based on the Community Fridge’s slogan,
“Anybody can put food in, anybody can take food out, no questions, no hassle, no waste”.
But that’s just the first step. Now, the Weald Community Fridge has worked out how to help households across the city have their own allotments - on a miniature scale. Along with the twice-weekly food deliveries, households are being offered their own allotment, with herbs, salad vegetables and strawberry plants, all chosen so that they can have fresh vegetables and fruit from their own garden, balcony or even windowsill.
The mini-allotments come with cultivation notes and can be planted out into pots or into the ground. As people use up their crops, new allotments will be sent out to give people access to really fresh organic produce without leaving home. It’s hoped that the allotments will boost people’s moods and give them something rewarding and fun to focus on as well as improving food security.
12/05/2020
