HUNDREDS of people attended a new festival celebrating growing, cooking and eating vegetables in Abingdon.

The inaugural Plot to Plate Community festival was set up by the Abbey Buildings, One Planet Abingdon and Abingdon Carbon Cutters as “a celebration and a learning experience.”

There were talks, classes, workshops and activities to give people a chance to try new recipes, learn vegetable growing tips, improve their cooking skills and consider different diets.

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Heather Brown, who coordinated the festival, said: “We are very pleased with how it went, it was our first festival of its kind and we are very happy with the turnout.

“We had set out a list of objectives we wanted to achieve and I think we have achieved them all – we wanted to have people at the Abbey Buildings who wouldn’t usually visit them and we got a lot of younger people attending.

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“We wanted to encourage people to grow and cook vegetables more often than they would normally do and hopefully grow them at their place.

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“We had such good feedback and so many people told us they felt very inspired by it. It was a lovely day and we had about 500 people attending which is amazing given it was our first festival and that it was a very hot day.”

There were classes on fermenting and composting techniques, the use of vegetables in Syrian cuisine and how to start your own plot, as well as stalls run by community groups and a ceilidh in the evening.

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This story was written by Anna Colivicchi, she joined the team this year and covers health stories for the Oxfordshire papers. 

Get in touch with her by emailing: Anna.colivicchi@newsquest.co.uk

Follow her on Twitter @AnnaColivicchi