Grow Food
If you chat with one of the local residents at the community gardens, it won’t be long before you begin to learn about food growing. The gardens produce lots of fruit and veg each year that residents who get involved, are welcome to.
But in fact, most of the people who help at the community gardens didn’t know much at all about growing food before they got started. And you don’t have to either, you just need to be willing to learn…
One of the residents says;
“My confidence in gardening has sky-rocketed since I joined the garden. I knew nothing before and now the Community Gardener just gives me tasks and I just crack on and I love teaching and showing new people wee things in the garden. I’d never had been able to do that before. I feel like I’m advancing and progressing, and it makes me feel like one of boys, haha! I know so much now and I hadn’t realised that until new folk started joining the garden.”
The great news is, fresh fruit and veg don’t have to cost a lot or be imported from all over the world. The community gardens successfully grow native fruit a veg every year, including root veg (squash, pumpkin, courgette, potatoes), tomatoes, berries, apples, pears, plums, lettuce, spinach, fennel and all sorts of fresh herbs. Some people join as a way to grow food from home countries, that is difficult to find or expensive in shops.
When you get involved in a community garden you can access fresh fruit and veg grown there, often any surplus is shared with community organisations and pantries locally so all this locally grown goodness can be shared amongst the community.
“To have that injection of lovely, bright, healthy food, it brings hope into the community.”
Here are a few things some the residents said about growing at their community gardens:
“I love that we can grow our own food, theres nothing better than growing your own. Sowing the seeds, watching them grown, picking and eating – you can’t get any better or fresher.”
“To eat things that you’ve grown yourself, it feels really good – and it’s good for you.”
“The tomatoes…the difference in taste when you’ve grown it is unbelievable. Growing them from seeds and then you get something that you can eat at the end. It feels good doing that.”
“I started to notice that I liked the smell of earth and things like that, you know. And also the smell, something I noticed in the garden is the different effect of smelling like lettuce on a plate next to like really other rich food or something like that and then the smell of lettuce, the same smell, in the ground next to earth you know, it’s kind of like a thing that we can fail to notice until we actually do it.”
“I’ve grown my own courgettes and garlic. I’ve made all sorts of new dishes; courgette risotto, courgette quiche, courgette cake. I’ve tried different things in the kitchen because I have an abundance. It’s nice to be able to share surplus too. I enjoy inviting friends over for a meal and being able to say I’ve grown the garlic and other ingredients in this dish and enjoy it together.”
If you’d like to find out more about how you can get involved in community gardening and feel great in your local community head to the homepage to find your nearest garden and get in touch!