Nursery gifts fruit and veg plants to charity growers
GROUPS growing fruit and vegetables for food banks are to benefit from crop plant donations for the third year running.
Blaise Plant Nursery in Lawrence Weston is donating crop plants to 45 community groups across the city who are supporting those worst hit by the cost-of-living crisis, by growing food for food banks and schools.
The project, to donate 10,000 fruit and vegetable plants, started on March 24 with deliveries of potato and onion seedlings and will wrap up at the end of April with other vegetable and soft fruit plant deliveries.
This is the third year Blaise Plant Nursery has been able to provide donations thanks to grants from Bristol City Council.
It started in 2020 when the nursery was forced to close its shop during the first Covid-19 lockdown. The shop opens seasonally and had only reopened two weeks before the lockdown for the spring planting season. With no indication of when the shop could reopen, Blaise Plant Nursery was left with a wealth of fruit and vegetable plants that needed to be planted before the season ended to avoid all the produce going to waste.
A team of Blaise Plant Nursery and Bristol City Council Parks Department staff organised the delivery of the fruit and vegetable plants to community growing groups in Bristol who were delivering food to those who were shielding or growing for food banks.
The plant donation project has had such a positive impact on communities, that the nursery was
awarded further funding from Bristol City Council’s Climate and Ecological Emergency Programme to repeat the donation project this year on a larger scale.
Ellie King, cabinet member for public health, communities and Bristol One City, said: “These plants have been feeding the city throughout two unprecedented years, providing reliable sources of food in the most turbulent times.
“We now face a cost-of-living crisis and as a Gold Sustainable Food City, it is vital we continue to be as selfsufficient
as possible so everybody is able to put food on the table.”
Bristol was awarded Gold Sustainable Food City status in May 2021 by the UK’s independent, Sustainable Food Places Board.
The donation project supports Bristol’s commitment to maintaining this status by increasing the amount of nature friendly, low carbon food growing in the city and supporting food equality by improving access to nutritious, affordable and sustainably sourced food.
Rod Pooley, manager of Blaise
Plant Nursery, said: “We’re thrilled to be able to lend a hand and help more people grow their own.
“All of our plants are grown in peat-free compost and are free of pesticides. We hope we can encourage more people to take up environmentally friendly gardening.”
For more than 30 years Blaise Plant Nursery has been providing businesses and councils with hanging baskets, bedding plants and container displays across the country.