Welcome to the Secret Garden South of Bobber's Mill Bridge in Nottingham

Welcome to Windmill Community Gardens, home of the Climate Friendly Gardeners Project.

We are a group of local people, who are nurturing a wonderful community garden in the heart of the city. You'll find us just South of Bobbersmill Bridge, on the allotment site at the South end of Ascot Road. The Gardens are a great place where anyone can come to find out more about growing their own food in a changing climate. We cater for all abilities and welcome any nationality or age group.

Why not come and join us?

Sunday, 30 October 2016

2016 Pumpkin Celebration - What an amazing day!

The bee pumpkin - one of our "show stoppers"

Wow! That was an amazing day! We began with a pumpkin carving session in the polytunnel, for more than 20 people, which produced some gorgeous results and plenty of pumpkin to cook with.

The dragon's eye


The dragon himself

After the carving, we set up for the Celebration in the afternoon, laying out all the "show stopper" pumpkins that people had carved for us in advance, and people started to arrive with amazing tasting food! We had recipes from Bengal, Palestine, Pakistan, the US and the UK, and we got some great reactions. As usual, the typical response was, "I didn't know I liked pumpkin, but I do now!"

My little pumpkin!

Autumn leaves

Another dragon

A scary wolf

We also had all kinds of games and activities, including happa soma, coin balancing games, "get the eyeball in the pumpkin", apple-slinky making and we even created a well-dressing! There was a wonderful spooky woods over the bridge with some scary scarecrows for those in the halloween mood, and of course, we kept carving pumpkins all afternoon.

Our very own Donald Trumpkin

So many carved pumpkins!

Then as it began to get dark, we lit all the pumpkin lanterns and the effect was stunning! We gave prizes to the best ones and praise to all the rest. Special mention to Kelly who rounded off proceedings with a stunning display of fire-poi work. We'd love to see any videos folk took of that!

A Spockactular pumpkin!

Snakes and ladders!


A lovely example of peeling on a pumpkin.

Our Pumpkin Celebration was made possible only by the hard work of the volunteers who got the site ready and those who helped on the day. Thanks to Kathy, Cicely, Ash and Rowan for the pumpkin carving in advance, also to Penney and Gil for some of the show-stoppers, to Rachel and Jeremy for helping from dawn to dusk with cooking, fire lighting and washing up, to Ash for manning the apple press, to Cicely, Mo and the girls for setting up the spooky woods (and to Mo, Rebecca and Kelly for the fabulous scarecrows), to Matt for doing such a stunning job clearing up the nettle patch, and then helping out all over the place whilst still finding time to take great photos, to Jo and Gem for looking after the games, to Hassan, Jeremy, Shanaz and Zariffa for food cooked on site (and all the others who brought food along) and to Paulette who got lured on site with promises of fun and food, then ended up put to work on the jam and plant stall! We must also thank Greg, Mary, Dan, Danny, Jack and Tony for their help leading up to the event. Well done all!


Bob Marley made a welcome appearance!


Some of the competition pumpkins


Chewbacca!

A clever original design from an NTU student

Gem's amazing lion peeling


The bee pumpkin lit up