Summer is here and our garden is flourishing! We are so proud of all the hard work and dedication that has gone into our community over the spring season. Here are a few updates on what’s been happening at North Park Community Garden recently!
– Harvesting: Spring started off incredibly damp and ended with a severe lack of rain which we expect to impact our Summer harvest. The resilient veg such as tomatoes, cucumbers, courgette and broccoli have survived the weather extremes. These harvests will go into our tomato chutney and ginger jam. Gooseberries started to appear during late May, which means we’re going to have gooseberry jam in stock this summer.
– Maintenance: Our volunteers have been hard at work keeping the gardens tidy and well-maintained since the weeds have been thriving in the recent months. We’ve been weeding, watering, and ensuring that all of our plants are happy and healthy. The hard work of making our new compost bins has finally paid off, after several weeks of measuring, hammering, taking apart and measuring again! Our new compost bins will allow us to compost even more of our green waste and food scraps than before. A huge thank you to Alan and Eddie for their construction skills, they wouldn’t have been made without them.
– Events: If you’ve passed by the garden recently you may have noticed our big green container kitchen has arrived! We’re all so excited about what this means for us at Gateway and how we can grow and expand our community. Keep an eye on our social media for the upcoming opening event! During May we held a Picnic in the Park event to coincide with the coronation of King Charles with help from funding from Sefton CVS. Events like this really show us how wonderful our little park community truly is. Thanks to funders like Cargills, Asda foundation and Linacre ward councillors, who helped with the kitchen container development, so allowing us to host more events like this which we’re always grateful for.
– Get Involved: The Connectives have been working alongside us to develop an impact report on what we achieve as a CIC. It’s free to read on our website, you can read it by clicking the button below. This has been a fantastic experience for us to gain knowledge of how we can perform better and help the community more. If you’re interested in getting involved with our community garden, we’d love to have you! Whether you’re an experienced gardener or a complete novice, there’s a place for you in our garden. Contact us to learn more about how you can get involved and help us continue to grow and thrive.
Love, the Gateway Collective team x
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Hartley’s Newspaper now available
Our heritage group have been working hard and have produced a newspaper all about William Hartley and his love of jam and people (2 of the things we love as well!)
This newspaper is available in Gateway Kitchen Community Cafe, Bootle Library and Crosby Library if you want a physical copy or feel free to download it here!
Made possible with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund we have been exploring Bootle’s jam making heritage, focusing on Hartleys Jam. William Pickles Hartley founded Hartleys Jam in Bootle in 1874. We have explored the archives of local libraries and the universities and have found out A LOT about this remarkable man. Our findings will be published in a newspaper later in the year but the parallels for today need to be shared sooner!
Hartley was a self made man. He didn’t come from a wealthy family but he had a vision and he believed he could achieve.
What would the world look like today if we took the opportunities available to us?
Hartley was honest. He believed his products should be high quality and sold at a fair price
What would the world look like today if everyone was honest and fair in business?
Hartley believed he had a responsibility to the people around him. When he got married he pledged to give 10% of his income to charitable causes and this had risen to 33% at the time of his death. In total he gave away 1 million pounds which equates to £154,036,551 today.
What would the world look like today if big businesses looked after their local communities?
Hartley was a devout Primitive Methodist and his Christian faith was evident in everything he did. “My daily prayer is that God will show me what he wishes me to do. I only want to see clearly his guiding hand, and I am daily asking him to lead me.”
If Hartley was alive today it is possible he would be diagnosed as bi-polar. His mood fluctuated between times of intense focus and productivity and times where he struggled to get out of bed and his anxious thoughts overwhelmed him.
What would the world look like today if we believed people with mental ill-health could achieve great things?
