National Trust launches grow your own campaign

Michelle Obama’s doing it, VV Brown’s doing it, Hugh Fernley Wittingstall’s been doing it for years, and now the National Trust want you to do it too… growing your own food of course.

The National Trust’s Food Glorious Food website has just launched a new application which teaches you how to grow your own dinner party. The application is aimed at first-time growers and tells you everything you need to know about how to grow your own produce. When you sign up to the dinner party application you receive tips on what’s in season, timetables of how long certain things take to grow, and recipe ideas that incorporate these seasonal ingredients. The application is working to create a whole community of home-growers, putting up a map of where in the country people are hosting their home-grown feasts, and allowing you to share tips with fellow budding back-garden farmers.

Jenny Sansom, the National Trust’s local food coordinator, says: “Local and seasonal food is the best tasting and most sustainable food available, and it’s especially satisfying when you’ve grown it yourself. The grow your own dinner party app will help people use their delicious home-grown produce to throw a dinner party and celebrate the fruits of their labour with friends. Everyone is guaranteed to enjoy food bursting with flavour without having to pay top restaurant prices.”

In conjunction with this new application National Trust Food Glorious Food will be running free events at various National Trust properties all over England this summer, where you will be able to pick up supplied for growing your own produce. The National Trust are also giving away 170 million free seeds and seedlings, which you can get your hand on at these events.

So if you like your food organic, seasonal and local, where better to source it than your own back garden? To find out more about how to grow your own dinner party, get the ball rolling by logging onto the National Trust website at www.foodgloriousfood.org.uk.

Written by: Emily Boyd