Category Archives: News

Veg on the Edge at Saltaire Festival 2017

Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 September
Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 September

It’s that time of year when Saltaire Festival once again brings our village alive with a wonderful array of music, art, entertainment and culinary delights.

Members of our group will be on site at the Sunday School Garden in Caroline Street car park over both weekends of the festival. Drop by to say hello, take a look at what we’ve been growing this year and find out how you can get involved. You can also pick up a treat from our stall of homemade goodies and help us raise vital funds to develop and maintain our sites in the village.

Our growing spaces will form part of the Open Gardens Trail on the opening weekend of the festival (9 & 10 September). Click here to download a guide to the opening weekend highlights, including the Open Gardens and Sculpture Trail, as well as special events, Makers Fair, exhibitions and pop ups in village houses.

Join our friendly regular gardening sessions in Saltaire

Veg on the Edge are a group of local residents that meet regularly throughout the year to maintain food growing spaces in Saltaire village.

Activities include planting, watering, tidying, weeding, and of course sampling some of the fruits (and veg) of our labour!

Everyone is welcome to take part, whatever your previous experience. You don’t need to make any special commitment, just come along as and when you would like to.

In the growing season (April to September) we meet every Wednesday evening at 6pm.

We also meet throughout the year on the first Sunday of each month at 11am.

Gardening sessions begin in the Sunday School Garden in Caroline Street car park, and from there we move around to tend the other sites as needed.

There are also opportunities to get involved behind the scenes. Join us at one of our friendly and sociable planning meetings to find out more. If you’d like to come to a meeting send us an email at hello@vegontheedge.org and we’ll let you know when and where the next meeting will take place.

We’ll be seeing you,
Veg on the Edge

New growing site…your thoughts wanted!

Veg on The Edge have started work on an exciting new community garden on the grass verge Caroline Street/Baker Street. This new garden, like our existing sites, is for everyone to access and enjoy. Our members kicked off 2017 by planting an edible hedge containing blackthorn, cherry plum, dog rose, elderberry and hazel on the verge and more activity will follow soon.

As local residents ourselves, we really want this space to be used and enjoyed by people living nearby. We received lots of great feedback at our Info Event in October, and are using this to help create provisional designs for the garden.

Feedback so far includes:
– Space to grow herbs
– Accessible raised beds
– A foraging hedge
– Learning information about the fruit and veg being grown
– Bushes or trees to cover bare wall at the end of the site
– Area left for residents annual bonfire
– No permanent seating
– Examples of what can be grown in your own yard
– Adopting permaculture principles
– Family friendly
– Involvement with local schools

We will be hosting another Info Event on Sunday 19th February 11am to 12.30pm where there will be opportunity to see provisional plans and share ideas over a hot drink and some cake. We’d also love you to help us come up with a name for the site!

In the meantime, please share your thoughts or ideas about the new garden by commenting at our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/vegontheedge/ or get in touch on Twitter https://twitter.com/vegontheedge‎

Info Event for new growing site on Caroline Street

Sunday 9 October 2016, 11.00am to 12.30pm

Veg on the Edge are planning a new growing space so that even more neighbours can join our friendly group, or simply pick fresh veg, herbs and fruit when they fancy. The new site will be on the grass verge at the very end of Caroline Street where it meets Baker Street. Bradford Council, who owns the site, has given permission for us to build some raised beds for edible growing. If you live nearby we’d love to hear what you think!

On Sunday 9 October we’re holding an Info Event where you can meet us, find out more, and share your suggestions, comments or concerns. There’ll be activities for kids, and home-made goodies to sample, made from our own produce (we are experts at sneaking veg into cake). If you can’t make it along you can also contact us at hello@vegontheedge.org to tell us what you think or join our newsletter to keep up to date on the plans.

Locations of our existing growing spaces and proposed site…

Sunshine and showers at Saltaire Village Fête

On Saturday 25 June 2016 we had a lovely afternoon at the annual Village Fête at Saltaire United Reformed Church. Sharing a stall with fellow growers Saltaire Canalside Allotments, together we raised £130 for our community growing activities. Thank you to everyone that came along and donated, luckily most of our treats and produce had been snaffled up before the heavens opened! Take a look at some photographs from the day below courtesy of talented photographer Matt O’Brien.

Change to Sunday growing session May 2016

Due to the Bank Holiday weekend we’ll be postponing our regular ‘first Sunday of the month’ gardening session in May. This will now take place on the following weekend Sunday 8th May. Find us at the Sunday School Garden in the Caroline Street car park at 11am, from there we may venture to some of the other sites that need tending (Saltaire Station and Exhibition Road). All welcome, just turn up!

Coming soon…Foraging event with Mina Said-Allsopp

We are planning a special event led by the well-known forager and wild food specialist Mina Said-Allsopp (msitu.co.uk) later this year.

Join us on an enjoyable two-hour walk around the local area to learn what grows nearby that can be eaten, and how to identify it. Mina is highly knowledgeable and her walks are always great fun.

We’re currently finalising details for the event and will be posting the date and how to get tickets soon. Join our mailing list for further updates or email hello@vegontheedge.org to register your interest. We looking forward to seeing you there!

Veg on the Edge is expanding… Green fingers needed!

Want to grow your own organic veg? Get your wellies muddy? Meet your neighbours and have a laugh? If so, Veg on the Edge needs you!

We are expanding at both our current sites: the Sunday School Garden in Caroline Street car park, and Platform 1 at Saltaire Rail Station. We’re adding more raised beds to the ones we’ve already established, thanks to the support of Shipley College and Sustainable Saltaire.

We’re also developing two brand new sites: one on upper Caroline Street overlooking the railway line, and another outside the Jonathan Silver Building at Shipley College. There’ll be plenty of new growing space, so there’s even more opportunity to get involved.

We’re planning all sorts of wonderful crops, from edible flowers to Peruvian purple potatoes and now’s the time to get involved and help us sow!

From Wednesday 30 March we’ll be reinstating our weekly Wednesday evening session from 6pm to 7pm at the Sunday School Garden. For those of you that can’t make a weekday, we also meet here on the first Sunday of the month throughout the year from 11am to 12pm. You don’t need to make any special commitment … just come along as and when you want. Everyone is welcome, whatever your age or ability.

In addition, we’d love members to join our veg task force to help plan our activities and raise funds. If you’d like to be involved, come along to one of our friendly fortnightly meetings. Our next get together will be on Thursday 24 March at 7pm, upstairs at Fanny’s Ale House. Whether you want to get involved with planning and planting, or simply meet a few new people and chat about vegetables over a pint, you are very welcome to come along and join in.

Drop us a line at hello@vegontheedge.org if you’d like to come along or find out more.

New growing site and change to meeting times

The seasons are changing and there’s a crispness in the air! It’s time to hunker down and prepare for winter. But things aren’t going too quiet at Veg on the Edge.

We’re very excited to announce a sister site to the Sunday School Garden. Located at Saltaire railway station, the new site will be called Veg on the Edge at Platform 1, in association with Shipley College. We’ll be growing a range of edible plants for the raised bed just by the entrance to the platform. We’d love you to come along and join in.

We’ve also got a new winter timetable. Now the nights have drawn in, we’ve ended our Wednesday evening gardening sessions. However there’s still lots to do during winter, so we’ll continue to meet on the first Sunday of every month from 11am to 12pm. We’ll be tidying up the beds and gradually rotating the contents. We’ve already started planting out winter crops like kale, chard and rocket, and there’s more to go in. We’ll also be collecting any seeds for next year.

Do come along on:

Sunday 1 November

Sunday 6 December

Sunday 3 January

Sunday 7 February

Finally, we’re organising a tasty little programme of walks, talks and making activities, so we can get together during the cold months. We’ll share the details on the blog as soon as we know more or sign up to our newsletter to get an update by email.

Phew. No chance of hibernating!

Great Feedback at Saltaire Festival Open Gardens

We had a wonderful weekend at the Saltaire Festival as part of the Open Gardens trail. It was lovely to meet so many people interested in the Sunday School Garden in Caroline Street car park. Thanks to everyone who generously donated to our home-made cake stall or filled in a survey. It was lovely to get feedback on what we’ve been doing, what people would like to see, and how they might get involved.

Here’s a flavour of the comments we received:

“Keep up the good work!”

“Thank you for improving this location, it’s fab!”

“Brilliant idea”

“We really enjoy walking past the garden and talking to our children about the vegetables”

“Big respect for what you’re doing!”

Everyone we met agreed that they’d like to see more community growing spaces in Saltaire. We’re currently well on the way to developing projects for further sites, so that more of us can get involved and help make our neighbourhood even better. We’ll post more updates on this soon as we can.

We also heard that it’s difficult for some people to escape work in time for our regular Wednesday 6pm session. Starting in November, we’ll be adding an extra session on the first Sunday of the month at 11am, so that more folks can join us. Just turn up and muck in. The perfect way to work up an appetite for your Sunday roast!

Veg On The Edge

Community food growing in Saltaire, West Yorkshire