Access to Eden project awarded £2.6 million
for our exciting four-year partnership project to break down the barriers to Eden’s rivers and natural heritage!
Powering Penrith's Plants
We welcomed Penrith Action For Community Transition (PACT) and Garden Organic to our Community Tree Nursery in the heart of Penrith this week. We hosted a free composting workshop for Penrith’s gardeners and allotmenteers at our inspirational nursery, located at the Brackenber allotments in Castletown.
The event included examples of different types and stages of compost production, presented by Frankie Kennett and the team of Master Composters from Garden Organic, who were on hand to give advice and answer gardeners’ queries. There were various composting containers to view – from a wormery to the familiar large plastic ‘Dalek’. Volunteers demonstrated how to assemble the ‘Green Johanna”, which is a hot composter that speeds up the composting process.
Jenni Payne, our Community Engagement & Volunteer Coordinator said,
“Composting provides us with the fuel to grow our trees and the energy needed to help them thrive. Just what’s needed to give our trees a head start. They’re destined to provide us with the native tree stock we need to create new sustainable river habitats within the Eden river catchment.
“It was an inspiring day and I’d like to thank PACT and Garden Organic’s Master Composters for sharing their expertise with attendees on the day and our volunteers who do such a wonderful job caring for the tree nursery in all weathers.”
Many thanks to Ali Ross for the images
Our volunteers, led by Jenni Payne, also gave a demonstration of how they deal with different types of garden waste from their allotment site and how to create a simple but effective compost bin from wooden pallets and a dumpy bag.
Speaking on behalf of PACT, workshop organiser Anne-Marie Williams said,
“Home composting is absolutely a win-win. It’s a really effective way of using bulky green waste and kitchen scraps to produce a fantastic product to improve your soil and the beauty and productivity of your garden. Even people who don’t have a garden can use a wormery to convert kitchen waste into a fabulous compost for pot plants”.
We hope to schedule more events at the Community Tree Nursery in the coming months. We’re also on the lookout for additional volunteers to help at our site where we run twice weekly volunteering sessions. We welcome people of all abilities and can offer a variety of jobs throughout the seasons as well as tea and cake to fuel the workers! For more information about volunteering email us at volunteers@edenrt.org
Read more about the Community Tree Nursery and our other ‘Doorstep Sites’, thriving thanks to Access to Eden: breaking barriers, building bridges partnership work in progress.
The Eden Community Tree Nursery is supported by the Garfield Weston Foundation and Access to Eden: breaking barriers, building bridges – a partnership led by Eden Rivers Trust with a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
