From the archive
30 Sep 2026
Charlie Whale arrived at the Centre for Alternative Technology with three others - Jem, Radhika and Hannah - and no gentle induction. The gardens staff, Nick, Kait and Veronica, had been without residential winter volunteers for some time, and the 2026 growing season had big ambitions attached to it. The four hit the ground running, and a year later, as they prepared to leave, Charlie wrote down what had actually been done.
Much of it was heavy and unglamorous. The beds in the two polytunnels were rebuilt and refilled with the site's own food-waste compost, leaf mould and garden compost, with the added chore of sieving out slate - CAT sits in a disused quarry, so the stone never stops coming. Roger's Field and the Whole Home Allotment were brought back into cultivation, helped by CAT students on volunteer weekends. The harvest - grapes, squashes, borlotti beans and much chard - mostly fed volunteers, visitors and students.
Some of the year's work will not pay back for a while. A twelve-metre asparagus trench went in, alongside thirty globe artichoke plants - crops that future volunteers, not these ones, will be picking. Seed was saved from the tomato crop for the same reason. Under Nick's guidance the four also learned to work coppiced hazel and willow into hurdles, baskets, plant supports and pea-stick fences, using rods cut by the woodlands team. Charlie's verdict on that skill is blunt: never buy another bamboo cane.
Behind all of it sat the twice-weekly round of food waste through the composting systems, the weeding and hoeing, the watering through dry spells, the flowers for the café tables - the jobs that keep a garden functioning day in and day out. A second crew, Emma and three others, spent the same year bringing a coppice plot called Hazel Hollow back into management after a long period without it. CAT has run on volunteer labour for over fifty years; each cohort inherits what the last one planted.
Replace bamboo canes with coppiced hazel and willow. Cut rods from a hazel stool or hedgerow, push upright stakes in along the row, and weave the rods between them to make pea-stick fences, hurdles and plant supports. The material is free if you have the stool, and it regrows for future cuts.
Centre for Alternative Technology · Read the source