Hillfields Gardening Club

The Hillfields Gardening Club was launched in November 2005 thanks to Health Improvement Funding. The club enables local residents in Hillfields to learn gardening skills, visit places of interest, gain access to training, and get involved in their local community. The group visited Ryton Organic Gardens in June 2006 and joined forces with the Hillfields Photography Group in May to visit gardens and the Cotswolds.

The group meets once a week in winter and twice in summer to do some gardening and are now responsible for maintaining various sites across Hillfields including Colchester and Winchester Streets flowerbeds, the Village Square flowerbeds and East Street Pocket Park climbing plants. One member of the group has became a mentor for the group as she attended a two-day residential course, Organic Food for All, at Ryton Organic Gardens.

We have now signed a service level agreement with Whitefriars Housing Association to use one of their lands as an allotment. We are currently looking for funding to erect a fence around the site. The allotment will be used by the members of gardening club, local residents who would like to grow their own vegetables or those who have no access to gardens, and Horticulture students from the City College.

Zena, a local resident in Hillfields said:

I was fairly new to Coventry, and the gardening club promised to be a good opportunity to meet new, local people who shared my interest in gardening, and to get me away from my computer. Hard work, good company, the great outdoors, bad jokes, mediocre cake with luscious lemon filling, the thought of eating homegrown fruit & veg - what more could anyone ask for?