Please join us for our first ever Vale Wassail at Vale Community Hospital in Dursley on Sunday 19th February from 4.30pm. For this traditional ancient ceremony we will say a toast for growth and an abundant harvest. The wassail celebrates the humble apple tree. We will give thanks for its produce and scare away evil spirits, banish [...]
We will have a stall on the 21st of January 2017 at Stroud Farmers market! The fruit tree sale will include a variety of fruit trees and soft fruit shrubs available including some more out-of-the ordinary fruit like medlar, mulberry, various nuts, tayberry, loganberry and many more! We'll also be taking orders on the day for another delivery [...]
It's been a very productive few months this autumn at the Vale Community Hospital Allotments in Dursley. Our new allotment tenants have begun planting and our flower borders are in. The first flower border we transformed looked beautiful until frosts earlier this month - lots of bright colours and we hope that next year will be [...]
On Monday 3rd October 2016 we welcomed around 20 visitors to an open day at our Selsley Community Growing Scheme as part of the fantastic Stroud Valleys Showcase. In the beautiful parish of Selsley, we are fortunate to be able to use some private allotments that had been neglected over the last 20 years. We decided [...]
We're making excellent progress at Vale Community Hospital! We've had a good team of volunteers show up each week, new friendships have been made and we did 15 raised beds over 2 days at the beginning of August. The next week we started putting the compost in and they are coming along nicely now. Thanks to The [...]
We're collecting/accepting donations of unwanted shrubs and hedging materials - particularly saplings - that we're going to eventually sell or give away for a donation. The reason we're doing this is that a lot of commercial hedging, although promoted as native, is actually brought in from Holland. Our work includes being asked to create wildlife friendly [...]
On Sunday we ran our first seed saving workshop as part of the new Stroud Community Seed Bank, and we were delighted to find we’ve recruited a bunch of really lovely, enthusiastic people keen to become our first ‘seed guardians’. From complete beginners to those with several years experience, we were all able to learn and [...]
Potato Day 2016 was an even bigger success than the year before! In spite of the bad weather we had lots of interest and raised over £270 profit for Transition Stroud and Down to Earth. But more importantly we had many great conversations and heard from folk who have been inspired to grow more of their food [...]
We are coming to the Farmers' Market this Saturday the 16th with a whole range of fruit trees and shrubs available. With the ususal apple, pear, quince, cherry, nectarines, plum, damson, gage, peach, apricot, and the unusual ones, such as medlar and mulberry this year. Plus loganberry, jostaberry, blueberry, raspberry, tayberry, blackcurrant, redcurrant and whitecurrant bushes [...]
We hope that everyone had a lovely Christmas break and enjoyed celebrating the new year. At Down to Earth we always have a Christmas meal together and this year we met at the Selsley community growing scheme for a 'bring and share' Christmas meal. Quite a few volunteers braved the cold and wet to share a meal. [...]
