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The Beaconsfield Street Box
The residents of Beaconsfield Street have been surrounded by boarded up houses for many years they want to make a positive difference to their street. Most of the few residents left are making their front gardens pretty with plants, now they want to do more.

Last week Rosa had her first meal from her own vegetables and she wants to start growing more vegetables on the street. Buying ready made boxes is expensive, obtaining the earth can also be a problem. Rosa came to our Growing Granby open day and we offered to help.

Rosa then chatted to the other residents. A large box was planned and we made a trip to sort out supplies. One participant arranged the timber cutting and delivering from a recycled wood timber yard.

The colour scheme, a cheerful orange and sand colour, has been determined by the colours of the wood preservative. We scrounged an offer of a ton of top soil, but we would be grateful if the city council could supply such schemes with green compost.

Volunteers from the group offered their joinery skills. The yard owner wrote the address for the delivery down on a bit of timber and lost it... so the first building evening did not happen as the timber was not delivered! However this gave more time to talk to residents and neighbouring streets with similar interests.

The second evening one of the group went down to the yard to make sure the timber merchant had the address and put it on a sticky label for him.
The wood was delivered but minus the floor timbers!...

The person who had offered to build the box and had done the ordering and had the measurements, at the last minute, could not turn up, so others got together to work out what to do with too little timber.

This was very good for us and we then had to start finding out who had what tools in the street so actually a lot more people were involved than had been expected.

Several days later the soil arrived. It was delivered in a downpour so everybody was out spading the pile into the box. The workers all thought it was fun to do so much hard work in the pouring rain.

The next problem is going to be keeping the stray cats out of the soil so we are netting the box until the plants have grown. The other streets are becoming interested in making boxes as well and there is discussion about fruit trees in the autumn and making suitable boxes.

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