Does growing your own food bring local people together?
Allotment holder Anna Scruby takes great pride in growing her own food at her West Wales allotment.
It is Sunday afternoon, on a cold November day, and a local allotment holder works on growing her vegetables. There are only a few people around, but the care taken and the effort put in to their plots, shows. The striking thing about this allotment is the sculpture of CDs hanging from a small tree, a heartfelt deterrent to keep the birds away from the food they grow. It’s a wonderful thing to see that in times of great advances in technology, growing your own food still matters.
Allotments of this kind exist throughout the UK, and a charity in Mid Wales has recently been rewarded for its contribution to growing local food, with a lottery grant enabling it to set up a three-year project to bring community allotments to the surrounding areas.
Cwm Harry Community Garden, based in Newtown, was this month awarded the grant of £229,000, for their Get Growing scheme, which they’ll use to set up three community gardens in Welshpool, Newtown and Llanidloes.
According to Emma Maxwell, horticultural manager at Cwm Harry Community Garden, these allotments enrich society because they are more sustainable and give affordable, organic and healthy food to the community, but they can also bring local people together, giving them the chance to contribute to society in a worthwhile way.
The community interest charity already collects green waste recycling for the council and composts it on their site, with the ethos of making a complete circle. They then give the compost back to local growers whose vegetables go to their sister company, the Cwm Harry food company. The food company delivers the food bags into the community and, when finished, the green waste comes back to the charity.
Allotments in demand
Emma says there is a real demand in Mid Wales for growing spaces. Having set up the garden a year and a half ago, they advertised their 20 micro allotments to local residents for free.
The plots, three and a half metres by one metre 20 each, are the perfect size for growing.
She says, “All the micro allotments were taken up straightaway. We advertised them and they were all gone within two weeks, showing a real need for more growing spaces.”
The charity will be working with local schools for the Get Growing scheme, setting up gardens with them and running courses for teachers. They do not limit it to schools though and Emma says they work with all members of society, keen to link the older generations with the young, as she says that there is a good knowledge transfer there.
They are also putting a package together for the eager grower, on how to start a community garden.
Cardiff council currently has 28 active allotment sites, but these usually have a long waiting list. Due to the high demand, it is no surprise that community allotment schemes are appearing around the country. The Riverside Community Allotment Project here in Cardiff is one of these.
The project, which started five years ago, was initially set up alongside the Riverside market, but although the two are linked, the food grown does not go to the market. The 120 allotments they offer are shared between eager helpers, in an attempt to enable more people to grow local food and to benefit from the facilities.
Jenny Howell, garden manager, says, “Instead of having your own plot with the council, you can turn up and share in ours.” Open on a Wednesday and Friday, they encourage anyone to come along.
In the community
By working with schools and other groups in society, such as health and wellbeing groups and alternative education groups, they provide a vital service.
Jenny says, “It’s great to be in the city centre and have an opportunity to do really outdoorsy things and also it’s a real opportunity to become much more self reliant.”
She says the project does a lot of work on self reliance and sustainability to encourage people to grow more food. Building up potential growers’ confidences is also an important element for them and this relates to both the training courses they run and the allotments.
Jenny clearly cares about the project and the way that it gives back to the community.
Her passion even extends to the food they grow, of which they take great pride in. Currently, they are growing swedes and leeks as these are the most likely vegetables to survive the harsh winter weather.
Jenny enthuses, “Anybody can turn up and help out and everybody can share in the produce at the end.”
Whatever the weather, it is clear that allotment holders work hard on their plots. Margaret Nicholls, who owns an allotment in West Wales, says that she initially wanted an allotment because she wanted to support the local area. She says that the importance of community is one of the main reasons she decided to grow her own food.
As a nearby allotment holder lifts up a bright chard from its base, while another tosses some bean stakes into a heap, Margaret concludes, “You get to meet people you wouldn’t normally meet.”
