Acomb Garden pitching for funds at York Soup!

It's been an exciting month at Acomb's community garden project. We have been selected to pitch for a grant of £1000 at York Soup, a new initiative by York CVS where 100 people donate £10 and over a soup dinner on 25th June listen to 4 great local causes make a pitch for the money. There's still 30 tickets left, so get yours today and come along to support us!

We're fundraising for the next stage: installing full disabled access so that everyone can get involved (it's really sad for all of us that our friends Gerry and Denise can't join in because the only way into the garden is via steps). We also want to construct a meeting room/log cabin which will be the heart of the garden, for making tea, holding events or prayer times and including a tool store as well.


Preparing our pitch has also been a chance to reflect more deeply within the garden team about what we are working for. A place to connect with God's creation, to get involved in food production and to create somethingSoup  together. We conducted a community survey survey in 2013 which demonstrated that Acomb is hungry for a sense of community, with 48% of people putting loneliness and isolation as one of our biggest challenges.

Strawface McBean keeps watch
over the potato plants

York Press have covered the York Soup idea and the four pitches have just been announced. They're all great local causes, whether we win our pitch or not, we're looking forward to an evening where we can share our hopes for the garden project and build contacts and opportunities to work with others.

In the garden itself, work has continued to keep everything well watered and growing well. As the vegetables and fruit trees have come into full leaf, Messy Church planted sunflowers and created a scarecrow (immediately christened Strawface McBeanby some of our young people) to watch over the growing crops and keep the birds away. This was a team effort by forty-odd children and adults as we meditated on the story of Ruth, an environmental refugee whose relationship with the land was shaped by famine, poverty and scraping just enough food to survive by gleaning. Christian environmental charity A Rocha have written a fascinating meditation on Ruth here. Ruth was a woman whose faith and persistence are commended, a foreigner who became grandmother to King David and eventually Jesus himself. Amusingly, Strawface McBean has been scaring more people than birds this week, as people go to water the garden and forget that he's there!

See also:

• Acomb Community Garden - the story so far
• Acomb Garden: Inspiration from Helmsley
• Acomb Community survey report
• York Press article about York Soup
• A sense of community at LILAC