The Riverbank Market Garden will be opening its gates on 7 January between 10-1, an ideal opportunity to start those New Year resolutions to live more healthily.
There will be a free cookery class run by Cracking Good Food, advice on home composting and people can sign up for free training on growing food, cooking and composting over the next few months.
Visitors will be able to help plant fruit trees, bushes and vegetables on the site and sample a variety of free foods and drinks.
Local residents will also be able to put their names down for free fruit trees, bushes and vegetables that the project will help them to plant at home.

So begins a seductively well-written press release (1) we received the other day. To salvage a sliver of self-respect as journos, we asked Amanda Benson of Riverbank to tell us a bit more about the longer-term goals of the project. Here’s what she told us;

“We hope the Community Cafe will be on Merseybank Avenue and that it will used locally sourced produce, as well as the fresh fruit and veg grown at the market garden. Unfortunately the cafe has been subject to some delays due to problems with a lease on the building, but the market garden is up and running again. The cafe hopes to employ 3 local people on a part-time basis, being assisted by a pool of volunteers who’ll be able to take training courses and get work-experience. The cafe won’t be vegetarian, but will focus more on supplying affordable healthy food and teaching people how to eat locally and seasonally. People will be able to get involved by signing up as volunteers for a range of different roles, both long-term and short-term.”

Riverbank Market Garden is “behind the Co-op on the junction of Barlow Moor Road and Hardy Lane in Chorlton. The Garden can be reached along a short access road adjacent to the dentist’s.”

If you’re going to the event, why not write a report of what you saw and thought for MCFly?

Marc Hudson
mcmonthly@gmail.com

Footnotes
(1) Most of what you read in the mass media is a copy/paste re-arrange from press releases – see Nick Davies’ book Flat Earth News for terrifying examples of what he calls “churnalism.“