Here at Grow Cook Learn, our charity’s goal is to connect people to the rich outdoor world around them. We enable people to experience, discover, learn about and be inspired by the food, history, landscape and wildlife of the Shropshire Hills.
Located in the Shropshire Hills National Landscape, the Discovery Centre and Onny Meadows, run by the charity, already acts as an important touch-point for the many visitors attracted to the area’s great walking, history, wildlife and wealth of local food producers. It also provides a vital green space used by many local people spending that all-important leisure time with friends, family and pets.
The Centre offers a varied education programme, out of school family activities, themed events, a walking festival, and our 30 acres of meadow are managed under a higher-level scheme to protect the special habitat including traditional wildflower meadow, heritage orchard and coppice woodland.
The Outstanding Natural Project aims to build on the Centre’s reputation, delivering four separate but complementary schemes which will delight, inform and inspire visitors and locals alike. It will deliver four schemes altogether: Squelch – a wetland area and bird hide; Hillfort Home – an Iron age cookhouse, fort and play area; Soil’s got Soul – a growing and horticulture project and Wildlife Cafe – a remodelled café focussing on quality local food.
Find the four parts of the project below which are designed to fulfil the following goals:
- To inspire people about the food, history and landscape of the Shropshire Hills
- To encourage people to adopt a happier and healthier lifestyle through exercise, fun, learning and volunteering
- To support sustainable food production, cooking and healthy eating
- To connect people to an enriched wildlife habitat in the riverside meadows
- To create awareness of the environmental challenges faced by us all in the future
- To attract additional visitors and create new jobs
- To ensure the secure and sustainable future of the Centre and generate ongoing social, economic and environmental benefits for the Shropshire Hills into the future
This will be a fantastic journey for Grow Cook Learn and we very much want you to come on board. If you would like to learn about “Outstanding Natural”, please contact the Centre Manager at grant.wilson@growcooklearn.co.uk or 01588 676060
Our Soil’s Got Soul
Why are we doing it?
Soil. Dirty stuff that sprouts weeds, muddies your shoes and takes up space that could be concreted over to park your car? Or the precious living layer between us and bedrock, whose organisms generate every single fruit, vegetable, bread, biscuit, baked bean, cereal, oil and sugar that keep you alive every day – and every single foodstuff that feeds the cows, pigs, poultry and sheep that most of us also live off?
We not only love our fertile alluvial soil here in the Onny Meadows, we look after it. Preserving its health for future generations and growing and harvesting its produce for your delight in our cafe and shop.
Come down to Our soil’s got soul in our Meadows – we’d like to show you how we look after and learn from our soil, and how we’re addressing some of the challenges the soil of the Shropshire Hills and beyond faces from years of over-grazing and over-use of artificial fertilisers and pesticides.
What do we want?
This project looks at regenerative horticulture, using soil as a carbon-sink and producing food in a way that enhances rather than damages the environment. In one sector, there are three long polytunnels and through the doors at the end you can glimpse tomatoes and aubergines…. In another, there is a series raised beds with chunky wooden edges. They have a varied mix of tall and short crops growing, some finished, some just coming. This is the organic potager garden, with produce destined for market. The next segment has traditional low vegetable beds strewn with straw and mulch – it’s a no-dig regime. The final segment looks more agricultural with straight rows of crops – potatoes, lettuce and carrots. This is the core of the community veg box scheme.
There is a packing shed, where the veg boxes are prepared, and the field kitchen hosts regular BBQ evenings with the food picked direct from the gardens and diners encouraged to forage for their herbs etc. Raised beds house a variety of vegetables supplying our café and shop and a community orchard has pick your own apples, pears and plums. The project inspires our visitors, providing volunteering opportunities and help to those in need through social prescription.
