Energy Gardens, Recycling and Julia Bradbury at the Honest Tea Event

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Last Friday I was invited to go to South London at the Olympic park’s mobile garden to meet Julia Bradbury (formerly of TV’s Countryfile fame) and learn more about honest tea and their involvement with the mobile garden project. It was a gloriously sunny day, the train journey was simple and straightforward and I saw a whole new corner of London. It was in Stratford, near the Olympic park and there is so much building going on, with huge luxury apartments and new housing being built. In a little corner stood the mobile garden city.

After a while I got it, with a little help from the Groundwork team – it’s a mobile garden because it’s designed to be moved entirely, the raised beds are pallets that can simply be lifted and placed in a new location. Honest Tea are working with the charity Groundwork and Energy Gardens to fund the community garden. You can find out more about Groundwork and a garden near you here. Anyone can come and enjoy the garden, which chooses plants with more than one purpose to grow and benefit the community. For example, they choose flowers that are not only pretty, but are edible and benefit the bee population. They sell some of the crops to a local restaurant, which benefits from a local, organic food source with no food miles.

What is an energy garden?

We had questions, and this was one of them. The whole garden will be on the move in October, to Hackney Wick station, where it will become a community garden for the residents and travellers of the station. There are solar panels on the sheds which generate electricity that gets sold back to the national grid, generating income that goes back into the project. The building work that surrounds the garden currently will soon engulf the site, so it moves on. If you are thinking about solar panels in your garden or home, check out premium solar panel installation in Milwaukee or wherever you live.

As far as the mobile garden city goes, they provide workshops and backup for people who want to get involved, and people have a say in which plants are grown. They can also harvest the crops they grow.

About Honest Tea

The organic drink HONEST® has partnered with Groundwork to champion green spaces and urban gardening and are working to encourage everyone to connect with nature. Honest Tea is a soft drink that combines herbal teas with a touch of sweetness to produce refreshing iced tea drinks. All the drinks are 100 calories or fewer and are either unsweetened or just a little bit sweet. They use all fair trade ingredients and of course all the ingredients are organic. They are launching 3 new flavours this summer and have a wide range, including Honest Sport, Honest Kids and Honest Fizz. I’m a fan of iced peach tea, as well as normal builders tea, so I was keen to try it. I really liked the orange and mango flavour, as well as the classic peach, it was really refreshing, and I like the ethos behind the brand, the way they are keen to back community projects and their drive to connect with nature on a global scale. The bottles themselves are made from 50% recycled plastic, and the whole bottle and packaging are recyclable.

Getting Involved

My morning at the gardens involved me helping to harvest pea shoots for the local restaurant, I tried some straight off the plant and it tasted divine, when I got home I insisted we get some to grow! I really enjoyed getting stuck in, it was so satisfying. I must devote some more time to my garden and allotment. I also made a little hanging planter from an old Honest Tea bottle, some string and an ivy cutting. It’s so simple, you just cut down a bottle, and tie the string in knots around the lid and tie it up. I got to chat to Julia Bradbury, she was so nice, she has 3 children like me and is juggling work and motherhood just the same. I also got to try some blackcurrants straight from the plant, which are a great antioxidant and vitamin C hit. I thought it was such a great initiative, I felt such a mental boost from it, I can understand how much it benefits local communities. Here’s a video of the day, if you can’t play it, here’s a link to the video on youtube.

If you have any questions about the event I’ll be happy to answer them. Until next time,

Disclosure: I have been compensated for my time in creating this post, however all opinions are my own.

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