On a hot Sunday in June a small group of us Transition Towners and Lewes Little Gardeners met at Lewes Arms to stroll around the backways of Lewes to look at current and possible future edible planting of all the green in-between areas. Someone had planted some vegetables in a little patch up Pipes Passage. Another person had a herb garden outside their front door. The Paddock allotments were all bursting at the seams - currently the waiting list for allotments is twice as long as those available - and someone else was growing lettuces and runner beans outside their front door.

We ended up at the Town Pound - a privately owned garden on the junction of Abinger Place and St John's Terrace - whose owner wanted to grow vegetables on it but didn't have the time.

In an hour our small team transformed the patch into a low-maintenance, no-dig instant edible urban garden. Here's how we did it.

  • Step 0. Observe, for as long as possible (the organiser lives nearby).
  • Step 1. Amass a load of cardboard, compost/manure and straw (all free)
  • Step 2. Dig holes in the ground for the plants and mark them with sticks
  • Step 3. Layer the garden as follows: cardboard, compost, straw.
  • Step 4. Plant the plants
  • Step 5. Water in for several days
  • Step 6. Enjoy, and harvest some months later.

The plants were pumpkin, japanese pumpkin, marrow (at the request of the owner), sweetcorn, courgette, nasturtium and red orach. The idea is for these plants to provide rapid ground cover as a weed-suppressing, productive vegetable layer.

Next winter the weeds will have died and this plot can then be planted with perennial herbs, berries and self seeding annuals for a productive, low-maintenance mini-forest garden. Watch this space.

In true permaculture form, we harvested many other outputs from the day. First, it was great fun, a good way to get to know other people and learn new techniques, to empower ourselves for planting our own food, and to lead on to new ideas such as planting up other patches of private and public land (with permission of course) with food. This is one of the seeds of a transformation in the way we feed ourselves locally.

Get involved: contact hello [at] TransitionTownLewes.org.uk