You'd have thought that the Harvest Festival last weekend where we fed at least 100 if not 150 people from the garden would have left it slightly bare, but not a bit of it! My Dahlias have at last come into bloom and we still have an excess of produce.
This is the veg Tim and I took home just for the two of us on Saturday - although we stopped off at our allotment to share some with friends - including Poppy - here seen making short work of some fresh peas!
Topics: [food] [Harvest] [picnic]
There are loads of nice pictures of the Harvest Festival event, including all the competition judging and Moro's lovely cooking. I've put a good selection up on Flickr here.
If you like to follow progress on the site you might also want to join our shared Abbey Gardens Flickr Group.
Topics: [festival] [food] [Harvest]
Lovely pics - especially of our children and their prize winning cake of course! The pictures really capture the spirit of what was a lovely occasion. Our fridge is still full of veg coloured marzipan but, unfortunately, no more curly wurlies. Thank you so much for providing the opportunity for a real village show.
I think we can say that the Harvest Festival was a triumph! Great weather, wonderful food cooked by Sam Clark from Moro, the garden looked great, and the competition entries were fantastic.
This year's lucky winners in the competitive classes were:
101 A Vegetable Sculpture - 12 yrs of age and under
1st prize - no. 46 Emily Copley (Sad Octopus/Jelly fish)
2nd prize - no. 58 Finn Farnan Walsh (green pepper frog)
3rd prize - no. 55, 54 & 53 The family Farnan Walsh (for an impressive aubergine penguin family)
102 A Vegetable Sculpture - 13 yrs plus
1st prize - no. 1 Maria Benjamin
2nd prize - no. 7 Nelly Ben Hayoun
3rd prize - no. 4 Tilly Blyth
103 A Floral Arrangement on the theme of "What Will the Harvest Be?"
1st prize - no. 1 Dasha French ("excellent use of cauliflower")
104 A Garden-themed Home-made Cake or Traybake
1st prize - no. 1 The Keating Family
2nd prize - no. 7 Cath French
3rd prize - no. 4 Gilly Waller
FANTASTIC!
The only word to describe the event.
They say the sun shines on the righteous, and I think even the GOD`s & Mother Nature supported you yesterday with the weather.
Well done on winning the West Ham Trophy, and it was nice to both see and hear the support from local councillors.
Amongst the crowds all you could hear was praise (even down to the winning cake which I think all felt it had truly captured the theme of Abbey gardens)!
As somebody said of the event, `It created a small county show, bringing the flavour of the Country-side to the people of Newham`.
The cooking went down very well, and I spoke to a couple of people who said they had leaned a few new ways to cook vegetables.
It was nice that the gaps between the flower boxes was wide enough to allow a wheelchair, (although Mulch is not exactly Wheelchair friendly!) but by the nature of a Garden that is something that cannot be helped.
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