“We’re growing together, we’re harvesting that food together and then we’re making meals out of that food together.”The Beehive
Building a vegetable wildlife garden for the community
The Beehive Community Centre approached us in 2022 about working with us as part of the Nextdoor Nature Project. They wanted to improve their garden for people and wildlife and get out into the local community.
The Beehive Centre aims to reduce isolation and loneliness in the community by bringing people together for various activities. One such activity is a gardening group that meets every Thursday to work on the centre’s community garden.
“I’ve been managing the Beehive Centre for around eight years now and I absolutely love working here, however, it’s been really building-focused, everything we do has been inside the building, so we’ve had to ask people to come in to get involved in activities, I wanted to bring the community centre's ethos outside and we had a useless space beside the building so decided to build a garden, which is now used for activities and as a place to socialise and connect with nature."
The garden is filled with flowers and herbs that attract bees, birds and other wildlife. It is designed for wheelchairs and frames, making it accessible to all.
“We have a lady who loves the garden, she can sit here in the summer and she likes being here in the sun and looking at the flowers.”
Feeding the community
The gardening group also grows vegetables which the community centre chefs use for their weekly lunch club, where older people can come together for a three-course meal
“We grow vegetables and herbs that our chefs can use in the food and that can go back into feeding our community as well. It’s a really nice full circle that we’ve got, we’re growing together, we’re harvesting that food together and then we’re making meals out of that food together.”
The Centre has befitted from the support of Avon Wildlife Trust, who helped them run an open day, offered advice and supported funding applications for the raised beds.
“It’s enabled us to get further out into the community, we have a bed that we maintain and populate in the park as well and that’s got loads more people from the community involved in gardening with us.”
Building a pond and sowing a meadow
In July 2024 we introduced the Beehive to our community ecologist who visited the space and produced an ecological report on how they could improve the space for wildlife. They were so inspired by the visit that they wanted to create a pond. We co-organsied a pond workshop which was fully attended including members from the Redcliffe gardening group. As the session progressed people were swapping numbers as they were helping each other out with resources such as spare stone and rocks and offering to help each other create their ponds. The enthusiasm has continued, and the group have already scarified an area ready to sow with seed to create a meadow and have left other areas of unmown grass.
St Georges Park
Additionally, one of their bigger aspirations was taking over the bowling green in St Georges Park. The NDN project initially supported by introducing them to Redcatch Community Garden who had themselves taken over a bowling green in Knowle. This has been a long process, but the latest news is that one of the greens may go to a private company/enterprise, such as beach volleyball and the Beehive will take over the other green with the support of St. George Community Association and other community stakeholders. They will take the pace slow, undertaking small improvements and see how it develops with interest, what people would like to use it for and what type of garden it should be. This will help develop a business plan for them to apply for a larger pot of money.
