Brian Allen - Plumber and Master Vegetable Grower

Brian Allen - plumber and master vegetable grower!

We've returned back to Loughborough from Dronfield two weeks running laden with fantastic produce, green beans, rhubarb, cabbage, courgettes... Thanks Brian and Jane Allen!

Paul Conneally
Dronfield Woodhouse
September 2016

Know Your Onions - The Kitchen Orchard

Know Your Onions
Paul Conneally
Rushey Mead School
2014

The guys from G4S arrive back at work at Rushey Mead Secondary School in Leicester to find all their onion tops eaten. They are perplexed. Is it mice? Rabbits? Maybe the pigeons? It's a mystery. Not downhearted they resolve to hoe the ground and try again. Maybe netting the crop would help? A pigeon pie might just do it!

The land is on the developing Rushey Mead Kitchen Orchard site which at the moment is just a twinkling in the eyes of cultural forager Paul Conneally and the management of the school. An orchard in the footprint of the old kitchen and dining rooms. An orchard of heritage apple varieties associated with Leicestershire. This forms part of the wider vision for the school grounds as an edible landscape.

Watch this space!

Stonehouse Seedstore - Anne-Marie Culhane 2014

Stonehouse Seedstore created by Anne Marie Culhane in Stonehouse, Plymouth, UK.

‘Anne Marie has been working with residents from across the area to collect individual stories about our relationships to plants through growing and eating. The Seedstore also includes plants that are, or have been important in the story of Stonehouse, gathered through conversations with residents and historians. She has use these to create a seed store as a community resource, a connection to the natural world and a celebration of diversity in Stonehouse.’

The plan now is to keep the Store at Union Corner for people to see and read the stories, to go out to events, and for the swapping of seeds.