Recycling old football pitches

In honour of the 2014 World Cup final, BBC’s Countryfile team recently met the locals who have turned the old Swansea football pitch, Vetch Field, into a haven of growing and community spirit.

A year long project that started in September 2011, commissioned by Adain Avion, Cultural Olympiad Wales, Vetch Field was a defunct sports and music venue has been converted into a community garden/allotment. 

Over 100 Beds fill the 2,500 metre sq. site, where members of the community, families, organisations, churches, retirement centres and charities can grow their own food. The site also contains a kitchen, numerous communal beds and polytunnels. The gardeners care for the site, learn bee keeping, and cob oven building skills as well as keeping chickens and preparing food in the kitchen.

The garden has become a centre of community, where cultures, neighbours and families meet and tend their plots, swap recipes and share meals.

As part of our DMGT Green Week, we took this opportunity to look into our data. Did you know…

• We hold over 300 planning application features relating to the development of allotments
• Our local plan data identifies over 2,100 land allocations for allotments, existing and proposed
• OS Mastermaps identify almost 18,000 allotments across Great Britain
• Our Points of Interest Data shows:
• Over 2,500 points of interest that detail horticultural services
• Over 7,800 points of interest that detail gardening, landscaping and tree surgery services
• Over 1,800 community projects and networks