The Kimpton Team at Incredible Edible

The Incredible Edible movement started back in 2008 with the aim of creating kinder, more confident, more connected communities, all united around the power of growing food together. There are now over 100 members within the network in the UK and over 1,000 worldwide. It has made such an impact, that one of the two founders, Pam Warhust was invited to deliver a TED talk about the project. It’s incredibly inspiring.

The Kimpton team are always on the lookout for interesting projects to use our acquired skills for the force of good in our own home region of the North West. When we spotted this one in Knowsley, it was too good to miss.

The location for Incredible Edible Knowsley is a former garden centre that looked to have the infrastructure in place, but had fallen into serious disrepair through years of neglect. Of particular concern was the large rainwater storage system that was critical to the future success of the planned irrigation system.

Our brief was to survey what existed, what worked and what needed to be scrapped. With this under our belts, three of Kimpton’s most experienced team members went to site and set to work.

The first job was to blank off anything not needed, disconnect other feeds and then rip out anything that was to be scrapped. As you can imagine, there was a lot of waste that came off-site.

This left us with two nice clean poly tunnels, a (thankfully) serviceable rainwater storage tank and a usable plant room. With the ground cleared, we could start the installation process.

The next job was to install all of the ABS pipework, complete with isolation valves for each of the beds within the tunnels. All of this was supplied by Kimpton. The advantage of ABS in this instance is that its better able to withstand the changes in temperature that poly tunnels experience throughout the year.

All in all, the work took a few days and whilst we were slightly hampered by the impending lockdown, it’s all set to go and ready to see its first season of fresh fruit and vegetable grown locally, for the people and the community of Knowsley.

Here are some pictures of the team on-site at Incredible Edible Knowsley, hard at work. Thanks to our very own Mark, Keith and Christian for their brilliant work.

Update

We’ve had a lovely message through from the team at Incredible Edible, showing us the beds a few months after the job was completed. You can see from here that all is working and they’ve been put to good use in growing food for the local community.

This makes us feel very, very proud.

Oh, go on then, just one more update photo.