Brighton set to be a city of sprouting vegetables

Brighton and Hove City Council has announced that it is considering plans to allow residents to grow food on patches of spare land.

Council leader Mary Mears explained the city has “more potential gardeners than gardens”, so is looked to emulate a scheme pioneered by Todmorden.

The Incredible Edible scheme in the Lancashire town led to food being grown in unexpected places, such as a recreation ground and under a railway viaduct. While, elsewhere crops have sprouted in of all places, a Lidl car park.

The council is conducting a survey of available land, which they would licence for a nominal sum on the understand it is properly maintained.

The initiative stems from a project called Harvest Brighton, which recently won £500,000 of lottery funding to increase the number of people growing food locally.

Council leader and sustainability committee chairman Mary Mears said: “At the moment we have more potential gardeners than gardens. So this is a piece of lateral thinking which we hope will help to meet that demand.

“During the war every spare scrap of land was pressed into service. Maybe we could rekindle that ‘Dig for Victory’ spirit.”

We suggest The Level should be turned into a big vegetable patch to give the ‘locals’ something to eat with their Special Brew.

On a serious note, this is an excellent proposal as the concept of growing your own food is one that should be strongly encouraged.

View the full council press release here.

View the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership’s website for more information.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Posted by Joseph Lewis on January 15, 2010. Filed under Council News,Mary Mears. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry