By Cara Clark-Howard
Westlake Gardening Group
Forest Hill Plant Barn has kindly donated their plants and time to the Westlake Gardening Group this year.
Since we have last planted them, they have been thriving. We have been growing quite the range of veggies and fruits including peas, beetroot, strawberries, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, lettuces and celery. One of the Plant Barn workers, Sucheta, came down to our garden one planting afternoon and taught the whole group many gardening skills, tips and tricks that we have applied and used in our garden and will be using one day also in gardens of our own.
On Thursdays, we all meet up again and staked our peas. We also had a few strawberries and peas to snack on as we water them! We got to pick out the first beetroot which was very exciting for all of us to see the progress. Our kale, lettuce and celery are all coming on well and the broccoli and cauliflower will still take some time. We are hoping to donate some of our kale and lettuce to a local community cupboard next week.
The group’s plans for next year is to carry on learning new skills and growing seasonal plants. We also want to open the group up more and plan some more fun gardening activities that can get more students involved. Until then we are waiting for more veggies and fruit to harvest, as exams are coming up, I am sure many of us might go stell a few sweet strawberries before our exams for stress relief!
