Last year’s event saw us outdo ourselves once again with approximately 60 events taking place during the 10 days and around 3000 people taking part!
Our Compost Giveaway saw us give away an incredible 122 tonnes of compost to our residents compared to 30 tonnes the previous year. We expanded our popular Gardener’s Q&A event with a series of engaging talks from a variety of speakers and had 197 primary and secondary school students taking part in our Schools Potato Challenge. Other highlights included the Waggle Dance opening event which was attended by Masterchef 2013 winner, Nathalie Coleman as well as the introduction of a Grow Your Own Challenge – where residents were given a food growing starter pack in order to grow for a Summer Produce show.
If you missed any of it, you can watch some highlights of the week on the Council’s Food Growing page to get a flavour of what Cultivate is all about!
Now in the third year of the event, we will still be looking to encourage you to keep growing in your back and front gardens, balconies, allotments, schools, community gardens and other spaces in a creative way. However this year will look to expand the Cultivate Festival to incorporate the whole growing season from planting in March to harvesting in the autumn. This will allow us to showcase the excellent efforts of the many growers and inspirational organisations that are helping Waltham Forest to realise its ambition of become the Food Growing Garden of London.
So once again I encourage you to get involved in all or any of the events that we will be holding from the Compost Giveaway and Gardener’s Question Time in March to the inaugural Autumn Produce Show and fringe events in the autumn. I guarantee that whether you are beginner, expert or just curious, Cultivate will offer you something to pique your interest so get involved, get growing, get harvesting and enjoy Cultivate 2016!
