AUTUMN GATHERING – NOVEMBER 2023
Our Autumn Gathering of Tower Hamlets Food Growing Network took place at the brand new Feldy Community Centre on November 13th.
The theme of the gathering was: Embracing Autumn – preparing ourselves and our food growing spaces for winter. The day was filled with interesting stalls, inspiring workshops and amazing speakers and garden tours! About 80-90 people joined us for the event, including local school children and their teachers.
We were treated to a wide range of ways to enjoy autumn outdoors or in our gardens, whilst looking after our well-being.
Here we share some of the highlights from the day.
STALLS
Our friends at Cranbrook Community Garden had a stall selling plants, preserves and updating us on all their food growing activities.
Food Lives team had information and research on their work in Tower Hamlets and the importance of history, culture and heritage in our food habits and cooking.
Alani from Madleap had a fantastic display of mushrooms on their stall.
We had our lovely Limborough team with their stall, as well as our Wen stall, displaying our new map of Community Gardens in Tower Hamlets.
WORKSHOPS
During the day there were a number of workshops – including yoga sessions; how to preserve and pickle our gluts of produce; how to test our soil and inspiration for growing our own mushrooms!
We had Rahema from Oitijjo showing us on her stall and in a workshop how we can all be preservers, fermenters and picklers! Delicious!
Sunny Jar ran a session making sustainable products with us such as moisturizing balm from shea butter, herbs and beeswax!
Sam and Divya took us outdoors to teach us how to do soil testing, measure the wind and other useful skills to help our growing skills.
Vimalamani ran a very relaxing yoga workshop.
Pickling and Fermenting Workshop
Sustainable Body Products
Soil Testing Workshop
Yoga Session
LUNCH
A healthy and delicious lunch was provided by Ollie and his team from Bow Brew. Many thanks to them. We all sat together and enjoyed our lunch while the raffle prizes were called out! Did you win?!
TALKS
Sam and Divya from Earthwatch spoke about their Tiny Forests project and how to create them. Apparently there are about a dozen Tiny Forests in London alone!
Alani from Madleap was also one of our speakers. As well as a beautiful display of mushrooms on their stall, Alani inspired us in how beneficial it is to grow mushrooms, both for us and the environment.
Autumn is the perfect time to discover mushrooms in all their shapes, sizes and colours!
Vimalamani spoke about wellbeing and demonstrated the importance of lots of layers in the colder weather using plenty of props of jackets, hats and gloves! And also reminding us to keep connected and going outdoors, no matter what the weather!
GARDEN TOURS
We rounded off the day with two local garden tours led by Chloe from Poplar Harca.
They visited nearby Oban House community garden and Greening Brownfield to inspire us even more!
THANK YOU TO:
And thanks to Chloe, Poplar Harca and to Rujina and her team at Feldy for all their help and support for our Autumn Gathering. And to our Wen volunteers who helped out in so many ways too – Erin, Jan and Cristina.
We look forward to seeing you all again at our Winter Gathering in February 2024!
