Listen as ALT Group director Terri Lee-Shield explains the large impact small scale food systems can have on reducing our carbon footprint and solving some of our enormous global problems.

Explaining issues such as food waste, positive activism and no waste, no pollution growing systems.

20.09.2019 saw the Global Climate Strike and we honoured it by hosting a special Action Day at Blackhill Club Community Garden.
Watch as Shannon explains the three demands made by the strike and explains how local solutions can help fight global climate change.

When Spring comes around we want to eat well and eat fast. Beginning to see longer days and better weather helps us have more light and time to do more with our days so we need energy and vitality to keep us going. Our ALT Top 3 Spring Soup recipes are just that, tasty, nutritious and quick and easy to make.

All of these recipes have simple methods and ingredients and can be made with little fuss. We have kept all of these great soup ideas at less than 30 minutes each,

Here are our ALT Top 3 Spring Soups...

Winter is that time of year when we all crave warm, hearty, home-cooked meals that are comforting and feed your soul as well as your belly. Combined with the cold weather and often lower than normal energy levels and soup is the perfect meal for cold winter days, or long winter nights.

Despite the lack of normal seasonal growth in winter, there are still some fantastic receipes perfect for this time of year, and some that help stretch the magic of Christmas a little further, and make great use of leftovers from your feasting.

These are our ALT Top 3 Winter Soup recipes...

At our Community Meal we serve a range of soups all year around, but the start of Autumn is our favourite time to enjoy a steamy bowl of hot, home made soup.

Not only are soups great to warm you on a cold blustery, day, they are a great source of nutrition, easy to make and are a great way to use up your excess root vegetables.

Here are our Top 3 Autumn Soup Recipes:

At Blackhill Club Community Garden, work has been underway finishing the entrance to the garden, and we are very close to finishing this whole area. This week the volunteers decided to tackle their vision to create a rockery entrance, in order to make a bold visual impact for guests visiting the club

Fortunately we have been able to store and use reclaimed materials from the site to make our idea a reality. It took 6 volunteers and a total of 20 hours to transform the space from an overgrown area of grass and weeds, to a beautiful, easy maintenance Alpine Rockery.

The group decided to use rocks and gravel in an artistic way to highlight the alpine plants, ferns, ivy and ornamental grasses planted, that can all happily grow in colder or more hardy conditions, like we have here in the North East.

At our Community Garden project at Blackhill Club, we began with a hefty task and many elements stacked against us.

The site although large was unmaintained for years and had very little soil. Much of our soil areas, around the edges of the and had naturally developed over the years with grass and other weeds, and there wasn't enough soil to grow the food and herbs we had planned for the site. We knew after initial observations we had to increase our soil and growing area and began exploring possible solutions.

As well as the lack of soil, some of the edges had been planted with willow and other trees which had over grown and were beginning to bow and break, causing a safety risk. One of our first tasks in the winter was to cut back the trees, and we had an excess of wood material on site to put to good use.

The third issue we had on the site was due to en excessive flow of water coming off the neighboring hills. The water would flood down the car park area of the social club and run off all the green space, collecting in certain areas creating boggy wet land. We needed to find a way to capture and redirect the water.