With the rising cost of living, more and more people are becoming interested in growing their own food. As well as being cheaper, home-grown food is often healthier and tastier than food bought in the supermarket – and you can get fresh air and exercise from growing it too!
If you want to grow a variety of food and don’t have a large garden, you could consider renting or sharing an allotment. Ramsgate has five allotment sites administered by the Town Council – but there’s a waiting list as they’re so popular. To join, visit our website at
www.ramsgatetown.org/town-council/allotments.
But you don’t need a lot of space to grow food: you can grow herbs and salad crops in a window box, in pots or indoors on a windowsill. You can find information on food growing online or at the library. One example is the Better Century website, which has lots of information on how to start growing your own food at
www.bettercentury.org/pledges/grow-your-own-food. The graphic attached (from a gardening group on Facebook) shows the variety of different vegetables that you can grow in pots.
At the Town Council we’ve been learning from Broadstairs Town Team’s ‘Tasty Planters’ project, where volunteers grow fruit and vegetables in planters in Pierremont Park and near the church in St Peters, and where people can help themselves to the produce. We’re planning on doing the same with the planters outside Radford House in Effingham Street and are on the lookout for other places in Ramsgate where we might be able to grow food for the community – so if you know of any, please contact us on
info@ramsgatetown.org. Thank you.
Written by:
Councillor Tricia Austin,
Central Harbour Ward