Digging in at the plot – February

Feb 20, 2025

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that we’re heavily involved in this project - Keynsham Community Veg Plot in the Park. As you can see from the image above, it’s a vegetable plot located in a very public part of Keynsham Memorial Park. The location being just round the corner from the park cafe and toilets so, we get plenty of passers by when we’re working! Sometimes, they’ll stop and talk to us about what we’re trying to achieve with the plot. That can lead to some interesting conversations about de-centralising and localising as much of our food production as is possible as things stand at the moment. This is something we’ve frequently written about on this blog, with this being the most recent post on the issue: Planting vegetables (and fruit) and building communities.

Yesterday (Wednesday 19.2), we had one of our regular mid-week work sessions on the plot. The aim of this session was to get the beds ready for planting in the spring and also, to have a conversation about what we would like to plant. This is how it was written up on the Facebook page linked to above:

It was a productive session this afternoon (19.2). The compost bins were checked over and, the yield was eight full buckets of useable compost material. This was spread over three beds at the far end of the plot, with one bed getting four buckets worth and the other two getting two apiece. Aside from this, there was some general tidying up and weeding. After the dormancy of the winter, it feels like the plot is starting to come back to life again, particularly with three beds being worked over and having compost applied to them. Onwards to the warmer days of spring and planning what we're going to be planting on the plot:)

We want to feature write ups of what we do with the Keynsham Community Veg Plot in the Park on this blog to give you an idea of what’s involved in the running of a community food growing project. Obviously, no two community gardening and food projects will be the same because of factors such as their location, the demographics of the area the project is located in and also, who is actually involved in the day to day running of it.

The heartening thing is that the Keynsham Community Veg Plot in the Park is far from being alone in what they do. In the region we cover, there are a range of grassroots food growing projects, each with their own story to tell. Below is a list from The Directory of projects across the Avon region that takes in the cities of Bristol and Bath, plus the surrounding settlements:

Community gardens, city farms, organic gardening & food

We make no apology for yet again featuring The Directory. What we’re trying to do with this initiative, which is a work in progress, is show that it’s possible to start building the world we want in the here and now. This can best be described as Prefigurative Action which is defined thus:

Prefigurative politics are the modes of organization and social relationships that strive to reflect the future society being sought by the group. According to Carl Boggs, who coined the term, the desire is to embody “within the ongoing political practice of a movement […] those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the ultimate goal”.[1] Prefigurativism is the attempt to enact prefigurative politics.

Wikipedia

Again, we make no apology for returning to the discussion about prefigurative action and how this can offer a glimpse of what a better world could look like. It’s not about grand sweeping gestures. It’s about practical things we can do now that will start to make a real difference. Community food growing is one of those things. That’s why we’re heavily involved in the Keynsham Community Veg Plot in the Park. It’s about us doing what we can to amplify the conversation about de-centralising and localising food production and inspire others to start doing the same in their communities.

Digging in at the plot – February

Community gardens, city farms, organic gardening & food

AVON

BATH

BRISTOL

KEYNSHAM

SOMERSET

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