Ffynnone Resilience

We‘re in the midst of applying for the Local Places for Nature Capital Fund for the prototype Hope Garden. The deadline is 12th March! The proposed site for the prototype Hope Garden is adjacent to the Pen Y Foidr allotments, which is a Ffynnone Resilience project. Tess at the project has asked me to write a guest blog post, so here goes.

Hope Garden Newsletter — Wed 14th Feb 💖

A Community Assembly at the heart of a wildlife forest garden 💚

Hope Garden Newsletter — Tue 06 Feb 🌿

1. News
2. Links
3. Photos
4. Hope

Welcome to the first issue of the weekly Hope Garden newsletter! This is a bit of an experiment, I am writing this newsletter as a post published on the website and then it should be relayed to all the newsletter subscribers.

Breathe

I gave a mini-presentation to the Pen Y Foidr allotments tonight, only a 5 minute slot at the end of their meeting.

Denise Assembly ideas

Denise is one of the collaborators on the Hope Garden. Long time community activist and now Community Assembly organiser extraordinaire, Denise is diving in to help out with the Local Places for Nature application after next week.

Newsletter

Finally, it’s up and running. I was considering using Beehiiv as the newsletter platform but they don’t have a configurable subscribe form and they also don’t have the ‘RSS (ie blog posts) to automatic newsletter’ feature. So, Buttondown it is.

Website counter

I really don’t like Google, they are an advertising company that relentlessly & silently scrapes your data and sells you rubbish. Surveillance capitalism at its worst.

Site visit, site done

Well, I have just about finished the basic functionality of the website, meaning blog posts can be written using a web browser rather than a too-technical text editor.

Blogged

There’s a lot of work goes on behind the scenes with any project. Because I want the Hope Garden to act as an inspiration and also some sort of blueprint, with freely available plans, I think it’s really important to be out in the open with the development.

Moving notes to the blog

• Reworking website to become simple blog, for now. So rather than adding updates here grwd.uk/hope/notes, I’ll add progress to the website hopegarden.uk
• Old theme I used from GetHugoThemes was Vixcon. Might be suitable in future
• New theme is simple blog theme Bookworm. Can always copy content over to new, more complex theme if need be
• Also using TinaCMS, a simple content management system for static websites. This means easier for people to add blog entries.

Naturewise visit

• Met Raphaelle at Naturewise forest garden in Parc Teifi, Cardigan.
• Discussed possible prototype Hope Garden in one of 2 sites
• Would like to use one site for dual use ie possibly develop into more permanent covered fire pit area. Possible to incorporate fire pit into assembly space design, with view to build on later

Recycled plastic is still plastic

In the WhatsApp group, concern over using recycled plastic benches for prototype garden, not fitting into ethics. Totally agree, I was just thinking about price. Plastic benches about £140. David Hunter (artisan roundwood craftsperson) can do them for equivalent price, in wood, slab, Larch: