Taff tenants delighted with allotment makeover Taff Housing Association, its tenants and some of its key contractors have teamed up for an Allotment Action Day to transform derelict allotments at a site in Cardiff, allowing tenants to grow their own vegetables for the first time.
More than 50 people attended the Taff Housing Allotment Action Day at the Leckwith and Droves Allotments at Bessemer Road. They helped build a new meeting and training shed, as well as create a pond and fruit cage and plant up the site.
Taff tenants displayed their new-found growing skills in a planting exercise as part of a practical gardening training course. Taff Housing Association took on the five allotment plots in early 2011 and faced a mammoth task to remove a wilderness of marsh grass and tonnes of dumped rubbish, including broken sheds and greenhouses.
Taff, which has recently developed a number of social housing sites in Cardiff, called on its contractors to pitch in to provide these much-needed facilities.
Staff from contractor the Leadbitter Group planted up five new raised beds donated by the company, which will be used by disabled and low mobility tenants to enjoy planting and picking produce.
Developer M&J Cosgrove also pitched in, with its staff landscaping a new pond area; building firm Mi-space donated the fruit cage, which was planted up with currants and berry bushes to harvest later in the year; and maintenance contractor GKR Maintenance and Building Co installed fencing, gates and footpaths, making big improvements to site access. Last year, Macob got the project going by providing a JCB for site clearance.
Behind the scenes, the Probation Service’s Payback team has spent months shifting rubbish, spreading manure and topsoil and helping with the fencing and pathways.
Some of the new plots will be tended by tenants. There are communal growing areas and a children’s home schooling charity, New Foundations, run by a Taff tenant, will use some of the space for an outdoor classroom.
Taff Community Allotment Group Chairman Fanwell Tandi said: “I would like to convey my sincere gratitude to the magnificent work that all the contractors have done for our allotment. What was a derelict piece of land 12 months ago has been given a facelift and turned into a magnificent garden and recreation centre for tenants.”
Taff Housing Chief Executive Elaine Ballard personally thanked all the contractors for their sterling efforts to transform the site. Support was also received from the Leckwith and Droves Allotment Committee, Federation of City Farms, Growing Green project and Barclays Bank.
