Delightful Forest garden festival
The Forest Garden looked beautiful with its trees, our planting, the neat winding paths, the recent rains, some sun on the day, the bunting and all those people!
It was a day to celebrate and showcase the Forest Garden that volunteers have been working on since December 2020. The Forest Garden was shown a lot of love! It was visited by 200+ festival goers plus the 40 who came at dusk for the Bat Walk.
We are hoping that there will be a lot more volunteers for our Friday morning gardening sessions.
"The festival started with some recognisable songs from the Redbridge Music Lounge and their songs for the environment. It was a pleasure to see the children exploring the garden looking for various objects and bugs… also making wands and objects from sustainable materials, wood whittling and seed planting. The milling around of the community of various ages was exciting to see. It was truly educational. Oh! The parachute game was exciting. Both adult and children enjoyed it and were enthused by it." Yvonne
"Rakesh spoke eloquently about the benefits of a forest garden and the benefit of permaculture. His talk was engaging and educational. Fuad led an interesting discussion about Bangladesh and climate change. We were pleased that Redbridge Deputy Mayor, Namreen Chaudhry came and that stayed for such a long time." Ros
So many people volunteered their time to organise and run the festival – we reckon about 30! Thanks to the wonderful generosity of the volunteers, everyone sampled some tasty sweet and savoury vegetarian and vegan delights at our tea stall.
At dusk 40 people were treated to a fascinating talk and walk by Francis Castro of the Redbridge Conservation Team. The walk was along the corridor of trees from the forest garden along the brook to the café and back. Yes, we did see bats and learned loads! A bat monitor was left in the garden overnight and we will be sharing the results later on our notice board. Check their Facebook post on the Bat Walk here
"Loved the community vibes. Well done to the team". Yvonne
"I enjoyed seeing our friends and neighbours of many cultures and nearby streets joining us and being actively involved on the day." Peter
"I arrived tired and left totally energized and enraptured. Whilst helping people of all ages and cultures to plant seeds, I listened to the often moving stories of their lives." Ruti
"The bat walk was soooo fascinating!!" Muhammad
With many thanks to the goodwill of all those who organised the festival, those who volunteered on the day and all those that came along and joined in.
With thanks also to Vision, Redbridge Music Lounge, the Redbridge Conservation Team and to the Mayor of London who is funding the Forest Garden this year and funded this event on 4th September.