With support from the London Community Foundation, we’ve spent the winter growing vegetables with an amazing community of 3,000 people across Lambeth.
Over 100 households, 8 schools, 20 community gardens and 4 Lambeth Estates braved the weather and got their hands dirty growing their own food, many for the first time. Almost everyone shared their seeds with friends, family and neighbours, and helped each other out along the way.
Lots of growers told us the project helped them cope with lockdown: “Great to bring some life to the garden during lockdown”
We also caught up regularly with everyone in our community ‘Grow Together’ sessions. We’ve shared tips, tricks and stories of limp spinach and surprise success in equal measure: “Fantastic project, it has really helped with my mental health”
The connections made with each other has been the highlight of the project. Some amazing partners have also generously supported the project:
- Myatt’s Fields Park, and experienced gardener, Fabrice, provided hundreds of spinach, mizuna, cabbage, and onion seedlings. Thank you to him and everyone who delivered these precious and delicate seedlings to our winter growers.
- Franchi Seeds, who donated a huge number of assorted seeds which allowed us to provide amazing packages of seeds when finding them anywhere was a challenge!
- Collaborating together with each of the following amazing organisations helped all of us deliver more. We greatly value our work together: Lambeth Primary Care Networks, Black Prince Trust, Fight4Change, Lambeth AgeUK, Lambeth Early Action Partnership, and Slade Gardens Adventure Playground.
Alongside the growing, we’ve worked together with local groups to create five new walking trails on two new maps exploring Stockwell and West Norwood . The maps have allowed us to provide paid work for young local people, highlighted amazing community growing spots and taken people to green spaces they might never have known existed.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to grow, share and spread the word.
What’s coming up?
We want to work with more people to support community-led growing in Lambeth. If you have any ideas about how we could do this, we’d love to chat: director@incredibleediblelambeth.org
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