Ashford Allotments
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The BIG ALLOTMENT CHALLENGE

15/4/2014

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"Great British Allotment-Off" - brilliant idea or barking mad? Watch it and have your say.

Will it work? Is it just very, very silly? Will it bear any relationship AT ALL to real life allotmenting? Dare we watch?

Give us your views on the Big Allotment Challenge after tonight's first episode. All comments will be posted anonymously so you can be as flattering or as scathing as you like.
"watched it on Iplayer this morning , Look a bit staged to me but then I'm an old cynic"

"I thought it was dreadful. The bit where they judged the sweet peas and the radishes was interesting. But it was nothing like real allotments. They were shown the plots all ready with imported topsoil. "

"How did they organise this? Those people were from all over the country. Did they up sticks and move for 3 months? Or did the BBC bus them up at weekends and leve someone else to look after the watering during the week? Toatlly unrepresentative of real gardening"
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Prizes for the Summer Show

8/4/2014

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Make a note on your calendar for August 23rd, the date of the Summer Show. Super prizes have already started rolling in from our carefully chosen garden companies - and more are promised.

Make this the year YOU enter - the prizes will be enough to tempt even the most diffident. There is now a new page for the Summer Show (look on the menu on the lefthand side) and deatils of the prizes will be going on there soon.

Every family which has an allotment is equal when it comes to the show; it doesn't matter whether you've had an allotment for 30 years or 3 months, your chance of winning is the same. Even the most expert gardeners meet with frustrations from the weather, while absolute beginners sometimes have the most marvelous quality stuff. This is Kent, folks - we don't go in for fanaticism, just jolly good fun.

So for a show with a friendly village atmosphere and lots to win, make that date in your diary - August 23rd.

Click here to go to the "Summer Show" page with more details of the classes and prizes.
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Gardening courses at Godinton

5/3/2014

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Walled kitchen garden at Godinton
The new list of gardening courses at Godinton (walled garden shown on the left) is now out. Most of the courses are on ornamental gardening, but there is a course on growing your own food in September. Click here to go to the schedule.
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Chance of a lifetime

4/3/2014

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Just how do you rate your gardening skills?

Picture
The BBC are looking for contestants for "The Great Allotment Challenge". This is what they have to say:

"The series follows a handful of amateur kitchen gardeners as they transform a plot of earth into a patch of beauty and reveal all the wonderful possibilities that can be unlocked from allotment growing. Kitchen gardening and growing your own produce is an amazing way to live and this series celebrates that.

We're looking for contestants to feature in the series, those who have the skill and dedication and who could dig their way to victory and be crowned the winner of The Big Allotment Challenge. People who can cultivate the perfect carrot, make their green tomatoes into award-winning chutney and turn their dahlias and sweet peas into floral arrangements fit for a queen."


If this intrigues you, click here to go to the BBC website.

And here, to get more detailed information from the BBC
This is what the Telegraph has to say (with pictures) 
. . . here's the Radio Times article!

"The Great Allotment Challenge will be filmed in a walled garden on the Mapledurham estate in Oxfordshire and each coupling will have four months ahead of the filmed challenges to harvest their crop, so with the series expected to air in early 2014, they'd better get digging for victory..."

As it is now early in 2014, and they are still looking for contestants, I suspect that Ashford Allotment Society isn't the only one that sometimes gets its dates wrong! Lets hope it's due to air in early 2015! Otherwise it could all be a bit of a rush . . .
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Seed Testers Sought

28/2/2014

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Tuckers Seeds are looking for gardeners to help test their new seed varieties in the "real world", under a wide range of conditions. The varieties are shown in the letter from Tuckers below. If you'd like to help test, you'll be given free seeds, and at the end of the season you'll be asked to rate how they've performed.

We'd like to involve as many people as possible, though of course the amount of seed is finite. If you'd like to take part in this exciting new partnership, contact us as soon as possible at [email protected]

Use the scroll bar to read the whole document - there are 3 pages in total. Buttons at the bottom of the box will allow you to blow up the text to a larger, mare readable size.
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THREE ACRES AND A COW - exciting and important folk song show for Ashford 

25/1/2014

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Write it on your calendar - Saturday 15th March!   At 7.45 - 10.30 in the evening

"Three Acres and a Cow" is the real story of our relationship with the land - a story of which allotments make up a significant and undervalued chapter. Allotments are our last link with our medieval ancestors, whose rights to graze their geese on common land and farm a few strip fields were gradually stolen from them over the centuries.
EXTRACT FROM THE 'THREE ACRES AND A COW' WEBSITE

"Telling the history of land and food in Britain is always a multi-stranded narrative. On one side we have the history of enclosure, privatisation and the dispossession of land based communities; on the other we have the vibrant histories of struggle and resistance that emerged when people rose up and confronted the loss of their lands, cultures and ways of life.

These multiple histories go largely undocumented in the literature of the times, often expressed simply as a hanging here and an uprising there, yet in the music and stories of the people they take on a different life.

‘Three Acres And A Cow’ connects The Norman Conquest and Peasants’ Revolt with the 80′s road protests and Occupy via the enclosures and Highland Clearances, bringing a compelling narrative to the radical people’s history of Britain through folk songs, stories and poems.

Part TED talk, part history lecture, part folk club sing-a-long, part poetry slam, part storytelling session… Come and share in these tales as they have been shared for generations."

Click here to go to their website, with lots of reviews
Click here to go to St Mary's ticket website for more details
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Godinton open this weekend for charity

22/11/2013

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Picture
Click on the pic to go to Godinton's 'events' page
Godinton House and Garden is having an extra opening today and tomorrow (Saturday) in aid of the typhoon appeal. Tea and cakes will be on offer in the tea room, and all money raised will go to the appeal. Support them, and get a look at the garden in its autumn colours.
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    This website is happy to publicise all garden-related events.
    All the news, views and information posted on this website are produced and written by the website compiler, unless it says otherwise.

    Use the CONTACT box or click on the envelope at the top of the page to send us an item you'd like to see on our news page. Use "Add Comment" to comment on a news item.
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