Skip to your garden!

Turn your kitchen cupboard replacement into an upcycling opportunity!

At DIY Homefit we are passionate about upcycling!  Our recent article about a mud kitchen at an infant school shows how well old furniture can be put to good use.  So if you are about to undergo a kitchen cupboard replacement then you may well be able to reuse your old kitchen cupboards for something innovatively different!

So we were excited to come across the King’s Cross Skip Garden – pictured below.

The garden is a colourful oasis in the middle of the King’s Cross development.   It started as a vegetable garden planted in skips, and has now grown to a wonderful combination of wild flowers, vegetables and herbs, beehives and chicken coops.  The garden has become a thriving community project providing a range of different opportunities for local people of all ages and backgrounds to get involved.  So far over a 1000 people have been involved in creating the garden.

The garden is fully sustainable, with everything built out of recycled materials, mostly from the Kings Cross construction site.   As well as the garden itself, there is now a Skip Garden Kitchen that serves delicious food – grown and prepared in the garden.   For rainy days you can enjoy the garden from the shelter of a Moroccan yurt – The Hide – and stay warm from its wood burning stove.  

The project is run by Global Generation – a charity which gives young people opportunities to create a sustainable future.   These “Generators” learn a range of skills including growing food, tending beehives, making furniture and creating jams from scratch, and how to market and sell their produce.  

The garden is part-funded by the Big Lottery and the site and materials have been provided by The King’s Cross Partnership, BAM Nuttall, Carillion and Kier.

So, if you are about to embark on kitchen cupboard replacement and have been wondering what to do with your old kitchen cabinets then why not consider creating your very own skip garden?   You could set a new trend in your local area and also ultimately become more self-sufficient and reduce your carbon footprint.  A win-win situation!