Bandstand Beds – paving the way for everyone!
There’s nothing better for the mind, body and soul than getting outside and doing a spot of gardening, but not everyone is lucky enough to live somewhere with space of their own to enjoy this simple pleasure.
With this is mind a few years ago some raised beds were built next to the café in the centre of Clapham Common, and a few gardening enthusiasts formed the Bandstand Beds Association. From these humble beginnings, the organisation has burgeoned into the biggest food growing project in Clapham.
Three years ago, with in-kind support from Lambeth Council and grant funding secured by Bandstand Beds, the group turned a corner of Clapham Common’s Green Waste site on Windmill Drive, formerly known as the dump, into a lush community garden. Last year, due to the success and popularity of this amazing project, Lambeth allowed Bandstand Beds take over more of the green waste site to extend the garden.
Through CCMAC, Bandstand Beds have been able to secure funding from Lambeth’s levy on large events on the Clapham Common to pay for pathways in half of the garden. But the group now needs to extend these into the new part of the growing space, to make it a safe and welcoming place for everyone.
One of Bandstand Beds ambitions for the coming year is to set regular gardening sessions for people over 50 who want to get outdoors and get active, have fun food growing and meet people. They are already running trial sessions in the safer areas, but the new pathways will enable them to open ups the whole garden and make full use of their container kitchen.
To bring about this transformation to the rest of the garden Bandstand Beds needs to raise just over £5000 to extend the pathways, and to achieve this goal they have set up a crowdfunding page on Spacehive.
Each Saturday Bandstand Beds have a table outside the community garden on Windmill Drive with a plethora of produce from pea shoots to pickles. Probably the freshest veg you will find in Clapham! All of the money from the sale of this food will go towards the group’s crowdfunding.
And if you can’t make it on a Saturday then drop in to one of their gardening sessions on Wednesdays (6 to 8pm) when they also harvest veg, which is plentiful right now. It’s the garden that keeps giving!
If you would like to help Bandstand Beds their fundraising target of crowdfunding target of £4500 please follow this link to Spacehive to make a donation.
To find out more about how to get involved with Bandstand Beds food growing project in the heart of Clapham Common, and for information about future fundraising events visit their website.