Community
The gardening is only half of it.
Something is usually happening beyond the individual plots: seedlings to water on the community plot (Plot 30), a carnival stall to staff, a hedge to lay, a potato to weigh. Here are the highlights.
The plant sale
The plant sale in May is the big one. Members sow communally on Plot 30 through spring, pot on in the polytunnel and share the watering; by sale weekend the tables hold vegetable plants, herbs, flowers, strawberries and the odd curiosity, like the ‘Lady Godiva’ pumpkin: grown for its hull-less seeds, about a pound of them per fruit, and not a shell to spit out.
In May 2024 the sale took about £1,400 in a day, close to double our previous best; the sales have raised around £6,000 in total over the last few years. We’ve taken card payments since 2024. Everything raised goes back into the society’s work: shared tools, Plot 30 and subsidised events through the year.
Stannington Carnival
We ran a stall at the Stannington Carnival in 2024 and 2025. The stall isn’t there to make money: proceeds go to a local community group after each carnival, and in 2024 the leftover plants were donated to a local infant school for its bee garden. That year five members stepped up at short notice to run the stall; a photo of the society at the carnival made the council newsletter.
Workshops and visits
In January 2025 we ran a free bird-box workshop on Plot 30, open to members and non-members alike. About 30 boxes were built in a morning, in two designs (robin boxes and tit boxes), with eco-friendly paints on hand so children could decorate theirs. Our resident ornithologist’s siting advice: face the box north or east, so the chicks don’t overheat. The red-listed willow tit has become locally extinct along the valley; boxes and healthy hedgerows are our small end of the bargain.
In June 2025 RHS Sheffield visited the site, with fruit-tree workshops on two plots, apples and pears on one and stone fruit on the other, then a question-and-answer session on the community plot that ranged from espaliering to the art of watering.
The fuddle and produce competition
A fuddle is the South Yorkshire word for a shared feast, and ours closes the growing season each September. The 2024 fuddle brought a produce competition in seven categories: Heaviest Fruit or Veg, Prettiest Flower, Best Display, Longest Bean, Wonkiest Veg, Best Thing Made with an allotment crop, and Most Mass of Potatoes Grown in a Bag. The potato class started in June, when everyone got a free seed potato to grow in a compost bag for the September weigh-in. There is also an annual allotment competition, judged and scored.
Working parties and gatherings
Plenty of what you see on site was built or kept up by members on working days. In autumn 2023 a group laid a stretch of hedge; the hedge-laying tools live on Plot 30 for members to borrow, and hedges are only cut between the end of August and the end of February, outside bird-nesting season.
The calendar still gains the odd new fixture: a solstice gathering joined it in June 2026, and we have already agreed to hold another next year.
The community thing isn’t for everyone, we know; if it might be for you, see what’s next and get in touch.