Community
The gardening is only half of it.
Something is usually happening beyond the individual plots: seedlings to water, 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 through spring, pot on 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.
The May 2024 sale was close to double our previous best, and the sales have grown year on year. We’ve taken card payments since 2024. Everything raised goes back into the society’s work: communal growing, site improvements and subsidised events through the year.
Stannington Carnival
We ran a stall at the Stannington Carnival in 2024 and 2025. The stall is there for the neighbourhood: 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, open to all comers. 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 for fruit-tree workshops covering apples, pears and stone fruit, followed by a question-and-answer session 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. Hedge work takes place 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.
Some come for all of this and some come for the quiet of their own plot; if the company side appeals, see what’s next or find out how to volunteer with us.