An 'Incredible Edible' group at St Gluvias Community Hall in Penryn have been hard at work maintaining the community garden during lockdown.

Incredible Edible Penryn is a community project to encourage residents to grow their own vegetables, share produce and buy locally grown food.

Posted on the Incredible Edible Penryn Facebook page, the group said:

"Volunteers have maintained a beautiful edible garden, with a lot of work, whilst maintaining the safety of social distancing, communicating online about visits.

"This is a vital space for our community now as we'll need to have access to affordable and healthy food."

Nub News contacted Incredible Edible Penryn and spoke to Ellie Brown, she said:

"This garden space that is part of St Gluvias Hall has been part of Incredible Edible Penryn now for five or so years, I got involved at the end of last year when I got back to university."

Ellie is a student and has been helping out once or twice a week, she says the garden gives her a lot of "satisfaction" when things start to grow.

She continued:

"A lot of the people who see it when they walk past the area are very happy to see it being used because it wasn't really being used for a while and I think it inspires a lot of people, it brings me a lot of satisfaction just watching things grow then also being able to eat it at the end.

"I am learning a lot from it because I don't have that much experience so you get to work alongside people who have more knowledge, it is just about sharing and experimenting and having fun."

"In theory, what we will do soon is when things are harvestable we will put up some little signs, let people know things are harvestable and hopefully people who walkthrough will be able to see that and help themselves.

"It is not really like we are distributing right now but there is the soup kitchen which runs in the hall on a Monday and when the Coronavirus dies down hopefully that will go back to running again and we should be able to supply anything we have to that and give out anything donation-based to the community.

The group has around five core members, with ten to fifteen members also showing interest to help but due to Coronavirus, the group has had to adapt the way it operates.

Ellie added:

"We have had to make sure that everybody doesn't just turn up because that wouldn't be allowed but we have got a nice Whatsapp group and we are quite good at coordinating through that and we have had two of us up there keeping the distance because it is a big enough space and we aren't sharing tools.

"It is not as nice as being able to get a big group of us together which would be ideal at this time of the year and we were also planning to do some work with Brownies who go to the hall could have a little bit of space to use and so that children are getting inspired.

Click here to see more from Incredible Edible Penryn.