Since early 2021, our small team of staff and amazing volunteers have transformed what had been abandoned and unused land into a bustling market garden and vital outdoor community space. In that time we've run free workshops and courses, hosted community meals, provided a space for people of all ages to engage with nature and fostered an environment of genuine community, serenity and belonging.
Our workshops have been on everything from land based skills like basketry, natural dyeing and mushroom growing, to well-being and mindfulness practices such as yoga, arts and massage. We've run training courses and educational events on beekeeping, agroecology, using tools and more and many of our volunteers have since pursued careers in growing food and horticulture.
We've fed people with produce grown in our garden through our veg boxes and with community meals and even brought in brilliant chefs to showcase their skills with the seasonal and flavourful produce from the garden. And we've enjoyed bringing people together over potluck style meals at our twice weekly volunteer sessions.
Why we need help:
This is a difficult time for a great many community based organisations, some of which provide vital services - ones that really ought to be provided by councils and governments. So why should you support us, if so many other groups are struggling?
We believe that growing food locally and sustainably, and in ways that actively empower communities, is a must if we are going to create a world in which people have real control over the food they eat, and the systems that produce it. Taking a stand for small-scale, community based, regenerative growing is taking a stand against the complex and environmentally disastrous food supply chains which exploit farmers - largely in the global south, necessitate pesticide use, and alienates us from the food we eat.
We provide a seasonal veg box scheme and sell produce to local restaurants. However, community work is really where our heart is and how we think the space is best utilised. We are making efforts to make the business side of things subsidise our community services, however with the cost of living crisis impacting our sales, and cut backs making the grant funding landscape ever more competitive, we really need your help.
What we’ll spend the money on:
We want to be as transparent as we can about what we’ll spend this money on. Like many organisations our biggest cost is wages. Most of the money raised will be spent employing two part time community gardeners to keep the garden running and ensure we can continue providing our current program of events and volunteering opportunities. Your donations will help make that possible, but they will also help to tackle chronically low pay in the horticulture sector and growing-based jobs - which sees many new entrant gardeners forced to take unwaged positions for years before they can find paying work, which is rare and usually poorly rewarded. It shouldn’t, and doesn't have to be this way. Being able to grow food sustainably is a skill which is absolutely crucial to any meaningful environmental restoration agenda, and indeed, to being able to successfully adjust to already locked-in climate changes.
Most of the rest of the funding will be spent on infrastructural improvements and increasing our outreach work, to ensure we are reaching as many people in our community as possible.