Penglais Community Garden

 

 

Located at the top of campus just behind the student's union building, Penglais Community Garden serves as a hub for students to grow their own food, learn more about gardening and connect with others. 

From utilising coffee grounds as compost from the Arts Centre, to passing on excess food to Aber Food Surplus, the community garden exemplifies sustainability and interconnectivity between students, staff and the local community. With a polytunnel, many plots and a pergola for sitting and reflecting, the garden is a welcoming and exciting growing space for anyone who wants to get involved.

History of the Garden

Written by Cathy Beckham, co-founder of the community gardens, Cathy reflects on how and why the garden was set up: 

"Back in 2008, when I was running the student volunteer office, we set up a Food Co-op project for staff and students. This was a scheme introduced by Communities First and was a very simple idea.
£3.00 bag for a bag of fruit that contained apples, oranges, pears and bananas.
£3.00 for a bag of vegetables that contained potatoes, onions, cauliflower, courgettes, carrots.
Customers would pay their £3.00 and specify what they wanted, and an order would be placed with the local greengrocer who would then deliver the items the following week.
This scheme ran very successfully and is still going today, in conjunction with the Aber Food Surplus project.
In 2012, one of our volunteers expressed an interest in growing vegetables that could be sold through the Food Co-op. A grant application was put in to CAVO and we obtained £5,000 to pay for a polytunnel. The University Estates Department agreed that the piece of land behind the Students’ Union could be used, and work started that October. Raised beds were in put in place and potatoes, carrots and leeks were planted, and a much-needed shed was built. Not long after that, the garden attracted the attention of Jane Powell who was a keen advocate of growing local produce and she started to develop the garden along with Marc Welsh.
The garden then developed into a community garden and grew into a space where people were able to learn about growing food, in a wildlife friendly manner through avoiding the use of chemicals and artificial fertilisers.
Volunteers meet up fairly regularly, most Wednesday’s late afternoon and vegetables are harvested on a ‘get out what you put in’ basis – shared between the volunteers. Excess harvest is passed to the Aberystwyth Food Co op and Aber Food Surplus."

Getting Involved

If you are keen to get involved, please join our mailing list to receive updates on gardening sessions.