autumn harvest picnic

We gathered on Wednesday to enjoy a harvest lunch together! The food, most of which had an element of the acre in it, included parsnip soup, apple cake, apple pie, potato and leek soup and roasted hazelnuts. Chutneys and pickles were in evidence too and it was fantastic to see everyone tucking in. We hope we can do more of these lunches as we enter into autumn - we'll need plenty of sustenance with all the hard work ahead!

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So the acre is thriving. ‘Men in Sheds’ - our regular Tuesday group run in partnership with the Farnham Maltings - is up and running successfully; this they were designing and making a series of nest boxes which we hope to locate around the garden and the surrounding neighbourhood. They have also drawn up plans for an hexagonal bench to go around the beech tree outside the workshop cabin. Hopefully work will start on this in the next week or two so that it's in place by the end of year. We've also been to see a shed which again we hope to have on site in the next week or so.

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Looking back on how the acre changes is an important element in planning as it's easy to forget how an area looked before it died down, was cleared or strimmed. Taking a close up of a bee really involves you in its activity and the same goes with trying to take a photograph of the wonderful dragonflies that are in abundance over the pond. The birds are a fascination too, with increasing numbers in evidence around our bird feeders and they are totally at ease with humans being just a few feet away. Our we now have a nature board up in the cabin which now has a large number of sightings of all the wildlife around us; birds, bees and dragonflies. We are a member of the Farnham Biodiversity Group and gathering information is part of our remit so that it can be shared to provide a greater understanding of where nature exists in our neighbourhood. If anyone would like to know more about this new group then please contact us and we’d be happy to share more.

And finally our big news of the week…the acre has been awarded the highest accolade we could have achieved at the South and South East, Britain in Bloom awards! We received a level 5 " Outstanding" from the RHS judges, scoring 87 out of 100 for our wonderful garden. In just two years we have created an incredible space, a unique garden which continues to evolve - driven by the vision and imagination of the volunteers, built by joint enterprise and funded by a fantastic group of local charities that believe in what we are doing and where we are going.

Everyone has their own feeling when walking through the door to the acre but " magical" is often mentioned and this sums up the garden.