A fond farewell to The Big Dig

The ending of The Big Dig event has been announced. Set up to get people into local growing projects , during its 18-month action period, it recruited over 8000 new volunteers to get involved in their local community gardens and got over 30,000 enthusiasts participating in local community gardening events.

The project tapped into a desire amongst volunteers to meet new people, to keep fit and at the same time help to improve their local green spaces and underlined the passion there is in towns and cities for community gardening and the potential is has to improve people’s lives.

The Big Dig event was organised by Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming; it started in 2012 in six urban centres and culminated in 270 gardens in 27 towns and cities opening their gates to visitors and giving them a chance to try their hand at gardening.

Participating towns and cities were: Bath, Birmingham, Blackpool, Bournemouth & Poole, Bradford, Brighton & Hove, Bristol, Chippenham & Swindon, Congleton, Coventry, Falkirk, Hastings & St Leonard’s, Ipswich, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Middlesborough, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford, Sheffield, Southampton, Southend on Sea, Totnes, Taunton, and Walsall.

Organisers hope that in the future other funding may be identified to allow it to rise again, but in the meantime Big Dig City partners are continuing to develop this work and you can Contact them to find out what is happening in your area

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