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Phase 1 of our Raise The Barn Project is to renovate our main greenhouse. This renovation will start in January 2020 and will take place over the whole year. We estimate it will cost us about £35,000 and we are asking for your support in helping us do this. If we raise £10,000 from the community we expect to be able to raise another £25,000 from grant giving organisations.
Our greenhouse is currently very leaky, many of the glass panes and seals need replacing, the floor is uneven, the electrics need re-doing, the south brick wall and guttering need repair and the ventilation needs attention. Your donations will help up tackle all of this:
£5 is enough to buy a sealing strip for one pane of glass.
£10 will replace 5 bricks in our crumbling south wall.
£25 will provide 1 square-metre of new flooring.
£100 will replace 1 pane of worn-out glass.
We'll use your donations to reseal all the glass - replacing the polycarbonate with new glass - and improve the flooring. We will also re-engineer the ventilation and irrigation systems as well as improve the electrics. Finally we will repair the crumbling south wall and turn the old cold frame into a raised bed for local children to garden in.
We will do all this in 2020.
The second stage of our Raise the Barn Project is to build our extension which we call our Barn. This will create a dedicated community learning space with a well-designed classroom for visiting local schools and a fully equipped kitchen meaning we can run cooking classes for all, using fruit and vegetables fresh from the Greenhouses gardens.
In our Barn, we will be able to run more sessions for schools, more community workshops and more community events. Two new loos, in addition to a disabled access loo, will mean less time in the queue and more time to play and learn.
The Barn will also have a shop where visitors can easily buy plants and produce from BPCG.
The Barn extension is cleverly nested around our main Greenhouse, maximising the available area whilst preserving current growing space. Architects Feilden Fowles are appointed to manage this project and will be applying for planning permission from Lambeth Council in the Autumn of 2019.
We have received great initial public support for The Barn. Our public consultation reached our target of 2000 positive votes and is still climbing. Some nice things people said were:
'Great concept for engaging the next generation and promoting health well-being and community citizenship.'
'Fantastic! Take my kids to the greenhouses quite regularly, and this would make our visits even better.'
'The building of the barn can only enhance the wonderful and innovative work that the dedicated team at Brockwell Greenhouses already do.'
'The greenhouses are a wonderful educational and social resource, a hub for our community. I fully back this exciting project.'
'I think given the funding cuts to schools in Lambeth many schools have had to cut their outdoor learning activities/gardening/forest school projects etc so I feel it is essential that projects like engage with local schools and nurseries.
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