The Deputy Mayor of Mid and East Antrim Borough, Alderman William McNeilly, has been celebrating all things ‘veggie’. He visited Eden Allotment Gardens, near Carrickfergus recently as part of a showcase event highlighting local produce, and vegetables in particular.
The ‘Love Veg!’ event was part of the Borough’s ‘Wild about Food’ project which has been running since May - in collaboration with Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council - and funded by Heritage Lottery Fund. It coincided with National Allotments Week, 8-14 August.
Alderman McNeilly said: “The ‘Wild about Food’ project is our contribution to Northern Ireland's Year of Food and Drink 2016 which is itself a celebration of everything delicious about Northern Ireland. At our Love Veg event we celebrated the fantastic local produce available to us in the Mid and East Antrim area and specifically all things ‘veggie’.
On the day, activities included ‘grow your own’ workshops, friendly farm animals from Blackberry Farm, building a giant bug hotel and of course a ‘veggie’ BBQ.
Allotment gardening can provide a number of benefits to individuals, such as the opportunity to produce a wide range of relatively inexpensive healthy vegetables, whilst at the same time providing physical exercise in the outdoors. It can create the opportunity to make new friends and in addition allotments are also beneficial to the environment and wildlife generally. We hope that by opening up our allotment sites and inviting the local community to see what happens behind the gates, more people will begin to see the benefits allotments bring.
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