25th August 2011
A brand new garden built on the principles of an organoponico has been officially opened by TV star, James Wong, at Ryton Gardens.
Wong opened the Exotic Garden on a sunny August morning to a crowd of hundreds that had come to see the culmination of six months of planning, building and gardening work at the site.
The resulting garden, part of the charity’s Sowing New Seeds project to conserve the unusual crops being grown by ethnic communities on allotments in the Midlands, opened to visitors with a collection of vegetable varieties including Calaloo (Amaranth), Chinese Stem Lettuce, Shark Fin Melon, Karella, Vietnamese Mustard, and Dudi.
From a design perspective, the Exotic Garden not only showcases the diverse range of crops found on Midland allotments through the incorporation of a large organoponico (a type of urban food garden first started in Cuba) and three global garden beds, but also a folly of a colonial ruin and a ‘rum shack’ that doubles as an educational space for visitors.
Cutting through a ‘rope’ of plaited yard long beans, James Wong said: “I’m really excited by the work of Sowing New Seeds and proud to be opening its Exotic Garden, which is the perfect way to demonstrate the project’s fantastic collection of vegetables!”
The Sowing New Seeds project’s Anton Rosenfeld said: “Our cultural heritage is diversifying and with so many multiracial communities in the Midlands our gardening heritage is too. The Exotic Garden is one way of sharing this knowledge and we’re so pleased with how the garden and the project have been received so far.”
The Exotic Garden is now open to visitors at Ryton Gardens, Warwickshire. For more information on Sowing New Seeds please visit www.sowingnewseeds.org.uk
Sowing New Seeds is a Garden Organic project funded by the National Lottery, the Brook Trust, the Sheldon Trust and the Fund for the Environment and Urban Life.
