Juliet Harris is Heritage Learning, Interpretation and Participation Trainee with Skills for the Future. Her 6 month placement is split between the Environment Trust for 2 days per week and Orleans House Gallery for 3 days. Juliet reflects back on her experience with the Environment Trust.

Free Horticultural Courses for young people at Marble Hill Park

One of our recent trainees

This spring 2015 our horticultural courses start up again at the site of our model market garden in Marble Hill Park.

These free nationally recognised courses are being offered to young people aged 16 to 25 years old at the garden site in Marble Hill Park.

Six volunteers from the Model Market Garden in Marble Hill Park enjoyed a warm welcome on a chilly day yesterday at Chiswick House Kitchen Garden, organised for the Jam Yesterday Jam Tomorrow project by Kate Robinson.

Twenty four enthusiastic people attended the 15th January Heritage Horticulture Workshop on Planting and Initial Training of Fruit Trees at the Model Market Garden in Marble Hill Park. You do not have to be an expert already to enjoy any of the Heritage Horticulture Workshops run by Community Gardener, Kate Robinson. The planting workshop covered how to prepare ground for planting and went right through to information about particular heritage varieties and the care and maintenance of fruit trees over their lifetime.

Since 2013 Jam Yesterday Jam Tomorrow has run fifteen events for the public and training sessions for volunteers, as well as commissioning Market Garden Game sessions in schools and horticultural training for young people. We ask people attending how they have benefited through learning and enjoyment. Typically participants complete a form or make a comment on a post-it note. We also try to capture informal comments made in conversation. For some events we ask an independent observer to attend and make comments.

More than 550 children from seven schools have enjoyed the Market Garden Game, run by Jam Education Officer Ed Bartram.

The game involves plenty of physical activity and role-playing as part of learning. Ed recently delivered our schools workshop to trainee primary teachers specialising in Geography, at Roehampton University. The aim of the session was to give the students an insight into presenting curriculum material in a creative way, and inspire their interest in the history of the area.

Natalie is one of the community plot-holders and this is her daughter Eva, looking after some newly harvested radishes. Lovely addition to a summer salad.

http://jamyesterdayjamtomorrow.com/2014/07/25/community-plot-holders-radish-harvest/ — at Marble Hill Park

This wheelbarrow full of produce was given to Age UK Richmond's Wellbeing Centre in Twickenham. They make a roast lunch, which we hope will now include Ratte and Home Guard potatoes as well as spinach and carrots and a bunch of corn-flowers to decorate the tables. The first barrow load was delivered on Thursday 10th July.

No, not a mistake or a trick, but the unusual variety Salad Blue Potatoes, first grown in Scotland in the early twentieth century. Shown here next to Ratte potatoes, all harvested today, 1 July 2014.

From the Dig for Victory bed, Home Guard potatoes. Ruth (volunteer) instructed us in the art of lifting potatoes without spearing them with a fork and making sure we find them all in the mound of earth. Home Guard potatoes were developed for a high yield available over a long period of the year and for ease of propagation. The potatoes came up dry and clean from fine earth, ready to clean and cook – a tribute to the hours of careful digging over and weeding of the past few months.