News & Events
Check out what events are being run at the F4F garden that is closest to you. Please just give us a ring to let us know you will be coming or to find out any additional information.
Reading Town Meal
Reading Town Meal 2012
After the success of the Town Meal last year we had planned to stage a bigger and better event in celebration and promotion of locally grown and sourced sustainable food.
Unfortunately we have been unable to secure sponsorship and the timescales involved and the extremely competitive funding landscape, together with the focus on Jubilee and Olympic related events this year, lead us to the conclusion that it will not now possible to secure the necessary funding to stage the Town Meal in 2012.
Obviously it's a shame to lose momentum, but we hope to be back next year and will continue to seek a sponsoring partner.
Sorry to disappoint, but we will do our best to bring this fabulous event back to Reading's cultural calendar in 2013. You can remind yourselves of why we all want to do that at this video kindly filmed and edited by Team TV http://vimeo.com/36269113
Hot harvest meal and a Hoedown at the Reading Town Meal 2011
A sun soaked celebration of home grown food and local produce enticed thousands to the first Reading Town Meal in Forbury Gardens on Saturday.
Organisers, Food4Families, who had planned to feed 1,000 people for free with food grown in their own community gardens, or donated by allotment holders across Reading, were staggered by the numbers who turned up on what was the hottest October day for over 100 years.
Hundreds queued in the sun to feast on local produce prepared by Reading College catering students, who served a Harvest Salad, Allotment Curry and Windfall Apple tart to the lucky first 1,000 diners.
Later arrivals, who missed the main meal, were able to try tasty morsels from cookery demonstrations by local chefs, including Paul Clerehugh of London Street Brasserie.
To wash down the Allotment Curry and quench their thirst in the heat, happy eaters were served up with juice from apples collected in gardens and parks around town and pressed on site, using the abundance of local produce that otherwise goes to waste.
The pumpkin competition proved a great hit with children who grappled with the monster squashes to help with the weigh-in, whilst their efforts in the scarecrow competition were judged by Reading Mayor, Debs Edwards with Food4Families garden group at Southcote Children’s Centre winning first prize.
The community organised event, supported by The Cooperative Membership Fund, was all about promoting home grown and local produce. Local traders with stalls at the Town Meal were flooded with customers keen to buy fresh food from local producers they could meet face to face, instead of anonymous supermarket food, often from thousands of miles away.
Ian Coulter of Betty Coulter Preserves, who specialises in seasonal produce based on his grandmother’s recipes, said “I have another event tomorrow, but we have sold so much I have to get up at 5am in the morning to make more batches. This has been a fabulous event and we will definitely be back next year”.
And it wasn’t just the food that was local, Reading bands added to the festival atmosphere, including Dolly & the Clothes Pegs, who sparked an impromptu hoedown around the bandstand despite the heat, and Myrke who delivered a chilled out set as the sun went down on what everyone agreed was a fabulous event, showing just how much fresh tasty food is grown on our doorstep.
Chekout the video of the event on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stcs_UFve5s&feature=related
Latest On Reading GrowAllot !!!
Want to grow your own food in Southcote?
You can come and learn how at the allotment at sessions run by a Food4Families gardener every
Wednesday 1 – 4pm
Friday 11-1pm
Saturday 10am – 12pm
Anyone can turn up and join in these sessions even if you are not a member.
If you are a resident of Southcote you can become a member of Florian Gardens Community Allotment.
Members will: -
- have their own key for the pedestrian gate and tool shed so they can access the site at any time during opening hours .
- be able to have a go at sowing, planting and maintaining a variety of vegetables, fruit and flowers.
- be able to share in the harvest of vegetables, fruit and flowers.
- be welcome to attend sessions run by the garden tutor on how to grow food.
- be expected to get involved in the management and maintenance of the site by attending the AGM and workdays.
- pay a £8 key deposit plus an annual membership fee.
Priority will be given to those residents without access to a garden of their own.
The allotment is officially open for business after its grand opening by the Mayor of Reading on Saturday 14th April.
The sun shone brightly for the opening and we missed all the April showers, everyone was very impressed with the changes(and the home made cake!). Visitors were able to sow seeds in the poly tunnel, dig in the new raised beds and sign up as new members.
If you would like to get involved in the Grow Allot site as a resident or volunteer please use Get in Touch button at the of this page to find out more information
Updates :
28/01/12
Another chilly day on site but we got the first 3 raised beds drilled together, and thinks are really starting to take shape.
27/01/12
In thankfully dryer conditions we took the delivery of our tool storage shed – a flat packed shipping container. With the help of the Youth Offending Service and residents we got it carried onto site and it went together a lot easier than a piece of IKEA furniture. It looks very smart and really gives the site some structure.
24/01/12
For 2 hrs in the pouring rain residents and staff manhandled 70 reused scaffold boards on to site and 2 tons of topsoil and 2 trailer loads of manure were delivered. These will all be used over the coming weeks to create the raised beds where the majority of the vegetables will be grown.
17/01/12
Despite the freezing conditions Probation officers and 10 supervised offenders have spent the last 2 days on site conducting a thorough rubbish sweep and trimming back all the vegetation around the edges of the site. They attempted to dig out bramble roots but when they had broken 2 forks they admitted the frozen ground had defeated them.
03/01/12
Work started on site today with contractors starting to clear the rubbish heap that accumulated over the years, lay the main paths, pour concrete bases for the tool storage container and potting shed and erect the security and other fencing.
17/10/11 – Update
The lease has been signed and completed.
The funds have been released by Big Lottery
Local residents have met 3 times and working with the RISC garden designer Dave Richards have developed the first draft of a design for the allotments.
Here's the draft of a design:
Click on the image to view/download pdf version of the draft design.
We are waiting for quotes from contractors and hope to start work on the site in November.
Any residents who would like to find out more information or would like to get involved should contact Sharon Fitton on 01189 586692 0r by email on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Or leave their contact details with RBC staff at the Advice Shop on Coronation Sq.
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Millions For Reading GrowAllot!!!
Thanks to thousands of people voting on the 29th June residents at Florian Gardens, Southcote and community group, Food4Families, are celebrating winning the £52,000 lottery grant in the Jubililee People’s Millions lottery competition final last week. 
The grant will enable the group to help residents turn a derelict piece of land into a big allotment garden, run by and for local residents – many of whom live in flats and don’t have the opportunity to get out and get growing at present.
Residents cheered as the £52k cheque was handed over by ITV presenter Simon Parkin after a tense wait to hear the voting results. Food4Families Coordinator, Sharon Fitton, said “we are overjoyed at this news and immensely grateful to the people of Reading who voted for our project and the fantastic support we had in building awareness to get that vote. Without the organisations like Reading Voluntary Action and Reading Borough Council we would not have got our message to vote across to the public”.
Runner Up - Still Wins !!!
http://www.itv.com/meridian-west/runner-up-still-wins87269/
Sharon continued “work will commence on creating the allotment garden straight away and by this time next year the vision we have offered people will be realised. Instead of a derelict dumping ground, the site will have been cleared, the garden built and residents will be harvesting their first crops of carrots, beans and potatoes; fresh, healthy, home grown food”.
Planning meetings to enable residents to decide how they want to run the allotment garden are already being set up and will be followed by design sessions to finalise the layout plans. Food4Families will support residents through the process of setting up and running the community garden management group and all participants will benefit from teaching sessions from their expert tutors.
Food4Families Steering Group Chair, Paul Harper, said “our aim for Reading GrowAllot is to create a series of large community run allotment gardens like this one across Reading. We hope this paves the way for a massive increase in the amount of home-grown, local sustainable food that is produced in Reading”.
Food4Families would like to again thank everyone who took the time to vote!
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