Beltane Newsletter

Celebrating Beltane &

Tregovenek’s community garden!

Beltane is the start of Summer. A time to enjoy the Earth being cloaked once again in green. All life is bursting with fertility, sap is rising, flowers are blooming, birdsong fills the air and growth is everywhere. The garden at Tregovenek is no exception!

☀️ The sun shone on Tregovenek’s garden opening day! ☀️

We are grateful to all our funders (Cornwall Council’s Social Inclusion and Climate and Nature Funds) and everyone who donated to the crowdfunding campaign. Additional support was provided by Tamar Organics, Stara Community Woodland, Caradon Stone, Tamar Grow Local, The Hive, Liskeard’s Community Treasure Chest, St Cleer Parish Council and Pensilva WI. But the hard graft was put in by our wonderful volunteer family.

👏 What a team!!! 💚

The garden is now open to the public daily from dawn until dusk and will be maintained through volunteer sessions held on Friday mornings. We hope for it to evolve and grow into a space for various gatherings, ranging from celebrations and meetings to workshops focused on soil health, wellbeing, permaculture, medicinal herbs, organic food growing and skills for sustainable living. Although for now everyone needs a well-earned rest!

So, if you haven’t already, please come and visit and enjoy a wander round. To keep food safe and children carefree, we ask that you securely tie your dog in the special area provided behind the compost toilet.

Friday morning volunteer gardening

Planting seeds of hope with Pensilva Primary School

We welcomed Years 5 and 6 from Pensilva Primary School on 20 March, starting with a walk across the moors from the school to Tregovenek, with Ele leading the children through a variety of nature connection games along the way. With great enthusiasm, Hayley talked about the importance of trees and the multitude of benefits to both human and other than human life, and how we can best care for them. Together we planted 60 native broadleaf trees in a new hedgerow around the community garden (kindly donated by the Woodland Trust). The children chose which tree they wanted to plant, and planted it with care, lovingly watering it in and adding mychorrizal fungi to the roots to aid their growth and connection with the soil biome in the hedgebank. They each whispered a wish to their tree.

As an extra activity, a full tray of beetroot seeds were sown by the children ready for the community garden veg beds and some colourful artwork created for the garden.

Our garden steward, Ben, facilitated an interactive session with our guests setting up a wormery for the garden, introducing the worms to their new home and learning all about the importance of worms for food growing and soil health.  Some of the children excitedly came back to our garden opening for a special workshop to make their own wormery to take away and are now proud worm farmers themselves!

In reciprocity for coming out and helping us with our garden and conservation activities, Ben and Hayley went to the primary school to work with years 5 and 6 again and some younger years to prepare a food growing area in the school. They now have two wormeries of their own, making use of some of the school food ‘waste’, turning this organic matter resource into growing medium for their veg plants.

Squash seeds were also planted – to be looked after in the classrooms until they are young plants, and then be planted in the growing beds. The children also made their own paper pots and planted seeds to take home and grow in their gardens.

🥕 We hope this wonderful partnership continues long into the future! 🪴

Tregovenek’s 2025 Pumpkin Challenge!

Over 100 squash seeds have been given out to the community as part of our pumpkin challenge thanks to Tamar Organics – with a diverse set of varieties such as:

Pumpkin & squash growing top tips!