Zero Mile Gardens

10/04/2025

Some of our seedlings at sunset 🌞🌻

We'll have a little selection of plants this Saturday... and hope to see some of you there ☺️🌱

07/04/2025

Coming up soon, a new workshop by Lou Lones from Lou's Wild Garden.

It will take place at the garden and include some demos there.

Booking on eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/zero-mile-gardens-80277122623

04/04/2025

The Makers at visited us yesterday with these lovely mosaics that they created last month, and installed them on our planters at the garden. Actually, numbers 1-6 were installed so we need 4 more planters to install numbers 7-10!

Our planters were made in April 2024. What a wonderful present for the garden's first anniversary and a lovely way to celebrate the together.

It was great to meet and catch up, to share some time, some lunch and a cuppa together in the garden ☕🥰🌱🐝 See you again soon Makers!

02/04/2025

We've been making bird boxes last week end! Some of them are up by the community garden in St Thomas Pleasure Ground and some will come up the walls at the at Emmanuel Hall. Now we're watching to see who is building their nests... We've done different types, some with little holes for t**s and sparrows, some open fronted ones (not on these pictures) for blackbirds and robins.

28/03/2025

A few pictures from our last workshop session funded by 's Growing Communities Fund.

It was an amazing experience, so nice to be able to share, connect and exchange about sustainable gardening and food growing in our city. So we're continuing!

A few more sessions are happening in April-June

See info and booking here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/zero-mile-gardens-80277122623

We ask for donation for these sessions so you can pay what you can afford and so our work can become more sustainable.

We've been sharing info and resources during these sessions, so I have included a picture of some of the books I brought along last week, including the French 'Vivre avec la terre' by Perine and Charles Herve-Gruyer. It's a very generous 3 volumes work: these growers share all their knowledge and tips they have acquired and been using on their small farm in Normandie, la Ferme du Bec-Hellouin. Luckily, it has recently been translated into English 😍('Living with the Earth: A Manual for Market Gardeners Volume 1, 2, 3'). It's great for market gardeners but also for allotment or back garden's gardeners 🌱🐦

26/03/2025

The Forest Garden at Dartington is under threat... It's an amazing place, that has grown after so many years of work. It's a place of inspiration for many of us.

See information and petition below.

I also share this lovely film on the forest and Martyn Crawford's work at Dartington https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_m_0UPOzuI

SAVE THE FOREST GARDEN
Petition: 27,677

Morning folks

Well we heard back from our landlords DHT yesterday, and without going into details it was a very disappointing response, not addressing our concerns for long term security of our forest garden at all apart from ruling out selling it to us.

So we're carefully considering our next steps in addition to questioning DHT about their intentions.

I met journalists from Wicked Leaks and from The Ecologist today so look out for articles coming out there soon!

On a more positive note, spring is advancing so fast here that every day there are visible differences in the plants growing and those starting into leaf. Wandering through the forest garden just observing for a while is a wonderful thing to be able to do.

Keep up the good work all

24/03/2025

Lovely to see you had a good time. Thanks to our dear Lin for being there for Zero Mile Gardens and St Thomas Community Garden, representing our composting team 🥰

22/03/2025

As the National Lottery Open Week 2025 is coming to a close, we'd like to say a huge thank you to the players for their support! Through the we've been able to get this tunnel and to now run our propagation project. Seedlings soon available.... and thanks to all our volunteer growers too ☺️

21/03/2025

Happy Spring everybody 🌱

First blossoms at the Alibi Garden and St Thomas Community Garden

20/03/2025

Coming up this Saturday 10am-1pm, the last workshop in this series on Food Growing in Small Gardens and Containers!

We had a couple of cancellations so a couple of space left.

All free

Please message me or email [email protected] to book a space and get all the info as location is different !

17/03/2025

coming up this week ... our dear Ziyang Lin will be there to share is knowledge and tips around community compost. He's been in charge of collecting kitchen waste at Shillingford Cafe for our community compost at St Thomas Community Garden for a while now, so he knows a lot !

10/03/2025

I just have to share! I love these pictures in and around the polytunnel... By the way seeds are growing now in the tray and we built our potting benches this week end, so many more to come 😍

04/03/2025

Our first crop in the tunnel will be rocket then...

24/02/2025

Thank you so much for such a rich and inspiring session. I loved all the beautiful pictures from your vibrant garden, and all the books to browse (Some of them were from the - a really good resource for gardening, food growing, and ecology). It gave me many more ideas to develop wildlife on the grounds!

Our next workshop session is on food growing. It's fully booked but we are getting a programme ready for the spring/summer

21/02/2025

Another great day at the pop-up cafe, with colouring, drawing, making origami pots, sowing and planting for wildlife.

Creativity and hope 🌱🐦🐣🐝

19/02/2025

I did the gardeniser course a few years ago, then run online by Social Farms & Gardens - Ffermydd a Gerddi Cymdeithasol. It was really useful to learn more about all the different aspects of community gardening. This round is run online and in person at Oxford city farm.

We are so pleased you are interested in applying for our Spring Gardeniser Pro course! For more information about the Gardeniser Pro training course see here Please fill in this application form to give us further information about yourself and to apply for the Gardeniser Pro course. If you would pr...