Contents:
- Editor's welcome
- Feeling good in the summer sun
- Rochdale's pancake legacy 30 years on
- Calderbrook Alpacas – The delightful world of fluffy misfits
- Rochdale “hero” completes gruelling 232- mile ultra-marathon for Jolly Josh charity
- Ogden family takes majority control of Rochdale AFC after £2m investment
- The timeless magic of Rochdale’s M6 Theatre
- Toffee or chocolate dipped apples
- Grey & Gorgeous
- Rochdale Infirmary opens ‘Oasis Garden’
- Inside Rochdale's oldest mosque
- Sue Devaney announced as new patron of Springhill Hospice
- Remarkable 2000-year-old Roman coins found in Littleborough field will stay in the borough
- Stiffen your resolve to do more exercise
- Rochdale Shopmobility manager retires after two decades
- Contractor appointed for Touchstones transformation
- Korean sticky mushrooms with kimchi greens
- High Level’s holistic approach to addiction recovery
- All eyes on Rochdale at Tatton »
- Post Office Horizon Scandal
- What's on this autumn
Autumn 2024All eyes on Rochdale at Tatton
About the writer
Silvana Devine is a social and therapeutic horticulture practitioner at Petrus Incredible Edibles Rochdale (PIER) which is a community allotment on Belfield Road in Rochdale.
PIER is a community allotment and gardens located on Belfield Road (next to the Croft Shifa Medical Centre) in Rochdale, which belongs to homelessness charity Petrus. It is a beautiful, relaxing and therapeutic oasis that grows fruit and vegetables and is a member of the wider Incredible Edibles network representing Rochdale. It is open to the public and people are welcome to visit and take a look around this award-winning garden. Petrus’ vision is to create kind, confident and connected communities through the power of growing food.
Every year, Petrus staff, service users and volunteers come together to design a garden to build for the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show. This year, we were delighted to be invited by the RHS to produce the show’s only feature garden, the Ginnel Garden. Bigger than anything we had created at the show before, we looked to the Rochdale community to help and our vision for the ‘Kaleidoscope Ginnel,’ started to come to life.
We ran sessions with pupils at Falinge Park High School, guiding them to create colourful glass floral mosaics that were set into wooden panels.
Volunteers from youth work charity Aspire 2 Inspire shared words of friendship and community, which were etched onto metal structures within the garden. They joined us on site to help with the build, as did volunteers from Willmott Dixon who also rallied their supply chain to provide a donation of PPE. Our friends at J Parker’s raised almost £5,000 through their sponsored 13.5 mile walk, as well as donating flowers, fruit trees, planters and more to help the vision for the Ginnel to take shape.
Long term Petrus supporters, the Cosalea Café in Bury donated delicious lunches for the team working on site every day for three weeks.
The Kaleidoscope Ginnel Garden became a shining example how Rochdale is united through community gardening. It also raised awareness of our charity and demonstrated the impact of the social prescribing work taking place at our community allotment PIER.
The legacy of the Kaleidoscope Ginnel will live on in Rochdale now that the show has come to an end, with four pocket gardens created for the community to enjoy.
If you would like to find out more about our time at the show, please visit our website: www.petrus.org.uk/tatton