Sustainability

Posted on by Stuart Posted in Community Building, Meetings, Notices


RAA Sustainability Group invites all members and plot holders to the Community Building on Saturday, 3 August, 12 noon to 2pm. We want to pull together the best advice from plot holders to help us all grow crops more sustainably. Our aims include; increasing bio-diversity, tackling pollution by reducing the use of non-recyclables and chemicals, improving the soil and promoting composting across the site.

Come and meet us for coffee and cake at our first session about pest control as we would love to hear from you. Please come and share your experiences of what works for you – and what doesn’t! As Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop UK, said:

‘If you think that you’re too small to have an impact, try sleeping with a mosquito!’

RAA plot holders’ café

Posted on by Stuart Posted in Cafe, Community Building

Summer café 2019The RAA Summer café IS BACK, prepared by and served for RAA members only. Thanks to some wonderful volunteers prepared to demonstrate their gastronomic skills the RAA café will be open, in the Community Building, on the following Sundays: 7, 14, 21, 28 July and 1 and 8 September.

The café will run from 12.30 or 1pm to 4pm, but times will be confirmed prior to each date. In past years the café has proved to be a great opportunity to meet and chat to fellow plot holders AND eat a delicious lunch. With your support, we can do it all again this year!

Quack hacker

Posted on by Stuart Posted in Notices, Website

Some of you may have noticed the RAA website was hacked, our pages diverted to an outside site selling pharmaceutical cure-alls.

We believe it is all fixed now but please contact the RAA website team if you find you are diverted away from the page or post you point and click on. We’d also be interested if anyone at the allotments has experience of securing websites against such hacks and could make themselves known to us so we can contact them in the event it may happen again (we hope that this is unlikely).

And if you suffer from ‘headaches, neuralgia, earache, toothaches, backaches, swellings, sprains, sore chest, swelling of the throats, contracted chords and muscles, anxieties, ravaged nerves, stiff joints, wrenches, dislocations, cuts and bruises’ can we recommend you first try a local chemist?

Wild about wildlife

Posted on by Stuart Posted in Feature, Wildlife

Why should I care? What’s in it for me?


As gardeners we can grow healthy produce efficiently and give nature a helping hand. If we make just a few changes to how we do things, we can save ourselves time, effort and money too!

Allotments and gardens, managed for wildlife, and cultivated organically, perhaps using the no-dig approach, can provide excellent habitats for beneficial insects, birds and animals.

Many of our long-term plot-holders know that with sensitive horticultural practice, working with nature rather than against it, a plot will achieve a natural ecological balance. Keep in mind that some of what we may see as ‘pests’ and ‘weeds’ are a vital part of the food chain for other species. To find out more, please click here to read Wildlife gardening, by Erica Wells.

Do you have an interesting story to tell? Would you like to explain what you grow, how you use your plot, what grows best in the London clay and climate, to share your experiences with your allotment neighbours and the wider web world? If you do please contact the RAA website team, we are keen to publish more feature stories from plot holders.

RAA website

Posted on by Stuart Posted in Website — 4 Comments ↓


The public face for the Rosendale Allotments Association is our website. We welcome any feedback you may have. The site and in particular this news section is kept up-to-date by the RAA website team led by Lance Hodgson. So if you have news or pictures you wish to share, please pass them on – fruit and vegetable ‘selfies’ anyone?

Stuart Russell has designed our website based on a ‘responsive’ WordPress template created by the developers CyberChimps. Each layout adapts to view well on PCs and laptops of different screen sizes, iPads, tablets, phablets and phones.

People use an array of devices to view the web these days, we hope the RAA site works well on yours. If you see any problems or busted links please let us know. Be sure to include details of your PC/tablet/phone type, the browser you use and attach a ‘screen grab’ if you can.

And please, if you need a website designed for your business or organisation contact Stuart!