May 2019
Regenerus, which co-ordinates lots of engaging activities and events for the local communities of south Sefton, facilitates the Taking Root in Bootle network which brings together more than 30 community gardens and organisations promoting local growing and healthy eating.
Supported by Well Sefton and the energy and enthusiasm of local social enterprises Lotus Brook and The Gateway Collective, we’re always looking for new ideas for ways to help out our community gardens.
And as we’re all about building the sharing economy between our members, we connected two of our recent events, a trip to help out the Friends of Rotten Row in Southport and our Taking Root Doers’ Get Together
On Monday 20th May we took 21 volunteers from across our network on a day out together, bringing a bit of ‘people power’ to lend a hand to work on the upkeep of the award-winning herbaceous border at Rotten Row, getting stuck in to some thinning out and planting up.
Brian Quinn, the Chairman of the Friends of Rotten Row, told us: “We’re a group of volunteers ourselves, and with over half a mile of gardens to maintain, any extra help is much appreciated. It was a great day – connecting people from north and south Sefton, all working together on something we love.”
It’s all about sharing so for the time and effort given by Taking Root volunteers, in return the Friends of Rotten Row gave us the plants from the thinning out. And the timing was perfect as we were all getting together on Thursday 23rd May for our regular Doers’ Get Together, so we spent a morning potting these up, along with lots of seedlings brought along by other members, and then redistributing them across the network, so that all our community gardens could benefit from some new plants at no cost.
At Taking Root, we aim to help the environment in every way that we can, so we apply the three Rs – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle – which all helps to cut down on the amount of waste we throw away. Reducing waste by reusing the cuttings from Rotten Row, we reused and recycled pots and containers, to conserve natural resources, landfill space and energy, and saved money for our community growing groups.
Ruth Livesey from Regenerus said: “Taking Root is going from strength to strength, not only connecting over 100 volunteers across south Sefton, but now building relationships across the borough. This week was a great example of the real benefits that we can achieve by people in Sefton working together, sharing energy and resources, keeping our costs low, and looking after and greening up our environment.”