Green-fingered artists from an Oxfam Cymru partner project have won a national Christmas card competition with a festive design composed entirely of fruit and veg.
Volunteers at the ‘Plant to Plate’ project in Newport (now called Duffryn Community Allotments) fashioned a seasonal collage using button mushrooms for a snowman and runner beans for a Christmas tree, and photographed it as their entry for a contest to design a card for the Rural Regeneration Unit (RRU).
Funded by Oxfam Cymru and The Co-operative Group, ‘Plant to Plate’ was set up to develop a new allotment site near Tredegar House in partnership with Duffryn Community Link, the National Trust, and Growing Space.
Families working with Oxfam Cymru’s Sustainable Livelihoods Project in Duffryn have toiled hard on the allotment since they first laid it out in April and last month enjoyed some of the fruits of their labour when they cooked and ate their produce on World Food Day.
Sarah Bishop, from Duffryn, led the design of the card. She said: “My mind started whizzing about which fruit or veg could make which picture.
“We won a hamper of Welsh goodies and the card will get printed and sent to hundreds of co-ops all over Wales.”
Much of the produce used in the picture is from the allotment itself or from local co-ops. The ‘raw materials’ included green beans, broad beans, mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes, onions, artichokes, chillis, leeks, kiwis, apples and raisins.
Jane Lewis, Duffryn Community Link’s learning officer, said: “We got all the produce together and did it there and then. It was fab. They came up with some brilliant ideas.”
Natalie Edwards from the RRU helped organise and judge the competition. She said: “They went to a lot of effort and their entry was the clear winner.
“The image is being used for 400 Christmas cards. They will be going to each co-op in Wales and also to Welsh Government organisations and partners so lots of people will see the image across Wales.”