Fed up of waiting around for an allotment? No garden of your own? Don’t panic - here’s a list of gardens and organisations just waiting for your green fingers.

The glorious Easter weather has really transformed the New Routes site. The plants have responded enthusiastically to that bit of warmth. The polytunnel is a mass of green seedlings ready to be pricked out, and we already have full coldframes and display shelves. Outside the perennials are putting on leaf rapidly and the orchard is [...]

New Routes: March 2009 by Jill Coleman It has been so nice to see the sun at last and actually to feel warm when we are at work. Only a couple of weeks ago we could only make out the first stirrings of early growth on the New Routes site. Now the gardens [...]

New Routes: January 2009 by Jill Coleman One of the nicest things about getting through the post-Christmas/new year doldrums is seeing the days start to get fractionally lighter and longer because you know that the year has turned and that Spring is heading towards us. Despite the bitter start to the month, things [...]

New Routes: January 2009 by Jill Coleman New Routes has had a slow start to the New Year. Although we were on site all the way up until Christmas Eve, we shut down for a week and the end of December and were due to return in the first week of January. However, [...]

New Routes: December 2008 by Jill Coleman A few years ago, when the MacIntyre Workshop (as the Learning Centre was called in those days) was starting to expand we thought about running a few gardening sessions. It was probably in about 2003 that we got our first allotment which we cultivated with [...]

New Routes: November 2008 by Jill Coleman Well, the Open Day at the orchard was a great success. In the middle of a grey, chilly week, blighted with squally showers, the weather was kind to us on the day and offered up blue skies and fluffy white clouds. We had a good turn [...]

New Routes: October 2008 by Jill Coleman It’s late in the season, but the growing continues. The onion sets and garlic should go in this week as we spent most of Friday clearing away the rampant growth of nasturtiums that had smothered the vegetable bed. Honey bees were still indignantly diving at [...]

New Routes: October 2008 by Jill Coleman With our rather soggy summer waving a forlorn farewell from the horizon, autumn is now well and truly upon us. Rather than spending the season in rest and reflection, though, it’s all been busy, busy, busy here at New Routes as we start to plan ahead [...]

Community gardening is an exhilarating pastime, and one we’re very excited about here at Fennel and Fern. It’s becoming more and more popular as increasing numbers of people who don’t own gardens find other route of getting into gardening. It’s a fantastic idea. Which is why we were so thrilled when Jill Coleman agreed to [...]