The team of volunteers behind Erw Dewi / Dewi’s Acre, welcome you to St Davids new community garden!
St Davids Community Garden is called Erw Dewi or Dewi’s Acre and is the result of a collaboration between EcoDewi, a local environmental community group, and St Davids Cathedral. Following conversations between the two organisations in early 2020, work began in November 2020 to begin clear this unused and overgrown space in order to create a garden that could:
- grow fruit and vegetables for locals,
- be a haven for wildlife, and
- be a welcoming space for locals and visitors.
Initially, even getting into the garden was tricky and once inside it was clear that a monoculture of brambles existed. The team were careful to keep an eye out for signs of wildlife and habitats, leaving certain trees and mature plants in place. All the volunteers offered ideas as to how to develop the garden and soon a plan was developed and an aspirational layout drawn up.
EcoDewi successfully applied to Keep Wales Tidy for a Local Places for Nature Community Development Package, which meant the garden received a greenhouse, a toolshed, raised beds, compost, top soil, fruits trees & plants, wildflower turf, wildflowers and herbs, bulbs, seeds, gardening tools, two benches and as an extra materials for installing a new path! We are very grateful to the volunteers who helped us with deliveries and installing items during a difficult first winter and spring period.
The path has made the garden much more accessible and safe to access, and suddenly made the garden seem less of a rough patch of cleared space and more of a designed community garden. The wildflower turf has really taken off as well the vegetable beds. Unfortunately the cleared ground allowed some new surprises with bindweed being our new nemesis. As a group, we decided not to use any chemicals in the garden so we really do have a challenge on our hands. As such, we’d definitely welcome more volunteers to join our team.
Over the last year we’ve added a new wildlife pond following a fundraising campaign, installed more raised beds, added a drystone wall and small lawn area for people to meet on, as well as working on more features for the garden. We’re very grateful to a range of supporters, volunteers and other groups who have made this garden what it is today. This include Menevia WI who donated a bench, Non Campus YPD school for their visits and help, St Davids Care who have helped with volunteering, PAVS for grant funding support, visitors for their generous donations that keep the project going and of course all our local hardworking volunteers. We have committed to giving away at leats 50% of our produce to the community, mainly through the St Davids Food Pod, with volunteers able to help themselves too.
The garden is open to everyone, from local residents to visitors on holiday, and we really hope that people will pop in to relax and enjoy the sound of birdsong or pick up a trowel and tend to a bed. We’ll let you visit and see how things have turned out but here are a few more photos of the site being developed.
We hope you enjoy visiting the garden and that you might consider coming back and maybe even volunteering occasionally to support us. There are all sorts of areas to help. You could volunteer in the garden with tasks like: caring for the veg & fruit, developing new flower beds, building wildlife habitats and focusing on biodiversity, woodwork to create things like signs, trellis and even a potting shed, creative tasks like sign writing and even designing artwork for the garden, and helping with social media or administering the garden and volunteers. If you’d like to know more ask one of the volunteers in the garden or email Jeremy or Sophie at [email protected]. You can also follows us on social media on Facebook and Instagram, and if you are able to you could support our Fundraising Appeal; more details further below. For now though, just visiting our garden would be great! See you soon.
USEFUL INFO:
The garden is accessed through a gate way off The Close, to the right of the Canonry building. The entrance/exit is immediately off the road and on a corner so care should be taken, especially with children, when leaving the garden.
The space is fairly flat and has an accessible path into and through part of the garden however some of the garden paths are woodchip and therefore not suitable for wheelchairs or those unstable underfoot.
There are a couple of benches located in the garden.
Well behaved dogs on a lead welcome but they must be kept on paths and please be considerate of those who may have a fear of dogs, especially children.
Fundraising
We are really grateful that some of the proceeds of the St Davids Open Gardens Weekend will be going to our community garden, however if you wish to make a personal donation to support the development of this community space and resource, please click on the link below: https://localgiving.org/charity/ecodewi/project/StDavidsCommunityGarden/