Latest news with #communitygardening
CBC
28-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
Aurora College research team wants to change the way the North looks at food security
In Fort Smith, N.W.T., an Aurora College research team hopes to shift the conversation around food security through community gardening, knowledge sharing and relationship building. Food security is a growing concern in the North, where costly store-bought food and the impacts of climate change, like wildfires and low water levels, highlight the fragility of local food systems. Sarah Rosolen manages the South Slave Research Centre at Aurora College and leads the Boreal Berry Patch Collective, which planted berry patches around the community last summer. "Berries are really important to people here," she said. "The concept started when we had a bad drought, and the berries in the bush were not plentiful, and people were really concerned about that." The group is working on the project with local Indigenous governments and organizations. From saskatoons to strawberries, each group chooses its preferred berry. Eventually, they will map the locations so residents and tourists can find specific berries. The team also draws on expertise from longtime growers who carry valuable knowledge about what thrives in the region. "People have been growing here for decades," Rosolen said. "There's a lot of history and knowledge about what can be grown here." 'It's really empowering' This year, the research team is testing which strawberry varieties grow best in Fort Smith. Rosolen said the project is about increasing food security and local harvests. Trent Stokes is training to become an agricultural technician. He said they want to share the data with the community so they can plant their own high-yielding strawberries. Stokes said this work matters now more than ever. "I believe that food security is a major thing that is overlooked in the North," he said. "We can diminish costs for fresh food … and it's a lot healthier for people." Along with free gardening workshops, the team manages the community garden and is building a network of shared wisdom through its Facebook group and hands-on learning. They've set up a plot for the food bank, which they maintain and encourage other growers to contribute produce or help with upkeep. The centre also has initiatives aimed at getting more youth involved in gardening. And they are exploring the idea of planting food in the town's fire breaks. "It's really empowering when people grow their own food … they're tasting a carrot out of the garden, and they produced that," she said. "We're building confidence and capacity around food." Another key member of the team is Jane Mariotti, a master's student at the University of Guelph. She's in the North looking at soil quality. Mariotti will collect samples from across the South Slave. They will use those samples to understand how wildfires and the surrounding landscape can affect soil quality. "We're going to look at the nutrients in it … that are important for growing crops," she said. "And see if we can associate any of those nutrients with particular tree species or vegetation communities. Mariotti says the work will help local growers better understand what crops might thrive in the South Slave. And what conditions to look for to find the best soil. "We're just trying to get some baseline fertility data for the area," she said. "Because there's not a lot of studies that have been done up here."
BBC News
21-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
Grenfell guerrilla gardener leaves RHS over 'toxic relationship'
A Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) ambassador, who is known as the "Grenfell guerrilla gardener" for his community work following the 2017 tragedy, has left the role over what he describes as a "toxic relationship".Tayshan Hayden-Smith announced his departure ahead of the Chelsea Flower Show - the RHS's flagship said working with the charity has "often felt at odds" with his RHS said it delivered "one of the biggest national community gardening initiatives" around the country. Mr Hayden-Smith's community gardening began in Ladbroke Grove, west London, after the Grenfell Tower fire and he was appointed by the RHS in 2022 to help the organisation reach out to younger and disadvantaged said he took up the role "well-intentioned and optimistic", hoping to "shift access" and "redistribute resource and wealth" within horticulture to more told BBC Radio London that he grew up just down the road from the Chelsea Flower Show - but said no one in his community knew about highlighted the stark inequality within the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, contrasting the wealthy south, where the show is located, with the north, where residents are affected by issues like air pollution."My experience of coming into this space (RHS) was because of Grenfell where people didn't feel worthy of safe, healing beautiful space," Mr Hayden-Smith said. The 28-year-old said he shifted his focus from a promising career in football following the Grenfell Tower fire, when he tended an unused piece of land in the local later grew into the Grenfell Garden of Peace and Mr Hayden-Smith launched the Grow to Know non-profit organisation to promote said he hoped his engagement with the RHS would help "redistribute access" to the Chelsea Flower Show - and gardening more widely - to the local community. 'Nuisance and annoyance' On his three years working with the RHS, Mr Hayden-Smith said: "I felt devalued, underestimated, and experienced a lot of difficulty and discomfort unnecessarily when trying to present and provide solutions."I felt like a nuisance and an annoyance."He also criticised the charity for the cost of entering the Chelsea Flower Show - tickets can vary from about £60 to £140 for non-members – as well as the funding it offers to community gardening projects."That for me was an uncomfortable thing to sit with," Mr Hayden-Smith said."Chelsea Flower Show is a very much a place where there's a lot of wealth. There are gardens that cost £600,000 to £700,000 for a six day showing." A spokesperson for the RHS said the charity has supported Mr Hayden-Smith's Grow to Know organisation in North Kensington with funds of £30,000 for a community garden."We also hosted and funded a fundraising event for the same community garden, asked local RHS members to support the project, and took part in a community engagement event with planting activities."The RHS delivers one of the biggest national community gardening initiatives, investing millions in school gardening, community outreach and grassroots projects around the whole country."The spokesperson added the RHS has partnerships to introduce wellbeing gardens at NHS facilities.
BBC News
12-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
'I used my back garden to help others after job loss'
A man who started growing food in his back garden to help people in need hopes to "inspire people to do the same".Christopher Jones began growing food after losing his job as a security guard at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020."I'd lost everything in lockdown. I had no jobs, I had nothing."I was struggling financially and I thought, well, I've got a big garden - I'll turn it into a bit of an allotment. "I was constantly studying on YouTube, I don't read books because I'm dyslexic but I can watch the video tutorials and learn from that." Mr Jones has since given his produce to people in Halton, Cheshire, via food banks, boxes set up on streets and through social media."In 2025, people shouldn't be going hungry and if an avid gardener could plant a couple of vegetables that would feed their family, but then any surplus could be donated to a food bank or a charity, then together we could make a massive difference."After years of being on a waiting list for an allotment, he was given one in 2024 and, following media coverage of his work, Halton Borough Council offered him another allotment so he could grow more for residents who were of the local community and others interested in his work have rallied to fundraise for the allotments and he is now hoping to buy more durable tools. He has set up a TikTok account called Mr Allotment to record his progress and maintain transparency and hopes it can inspire others."I've been asked to do things with schools, but at the minute because I'm doing everything on my own… it takes time away from me growing food for people in need."If a teacher wants to tune into my TikTok, ask questions, watch videos, watch the lives, they could learn and put it into fruition for themselves."Spending about 8-14 hours per day in the garden or allotments, he says he would "love to be able to do it as full-time but I've still got to work"."It's not an obsession - to me it is just like a general purpose."I just feel like if I'm able to help other people and if anyone's able to help other people, then they should try at least." Read more stories from Cheshire on the BBC, watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer and follow BBC North West on X. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
The Guardian
07-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Food and freedom: exhibition charts radical history of gardening in Britain
'B eing able to grow your own food is one of the most radical ways that you can express your freedom, your sovereignty, your liberation,' says Valerie Goode, the founder and chief executive of the Coco Collective, a Black-led community gardening organisation in south London. 'When you leave your food production in the hands of other people, you are leaving your health, your wellbeing, your sense of identity … in the hands of other people. When we reclaim our food, we reclaim our power.' The collective, founded four years ago to cultivate a 1,200-sq-metre plot of waste ground in Lewisham, is open to all but brings together members of the African diaspora 'to heal and also to learn about our history through the soil'. A Coco Collective gardening session led by Goode (centre). Photograph: Andy Hall/The Guardian Many of those who volunteer in the garden 'are only maybe one or two generations from people that would have worked the land,' says Goode, 'and our ancestors before that knew nothing other than being on the land.' In its own way, she says, the collective is 'radical … because we honour Mother Earth and [recognise that] we are intrinsically connected'. It's a bold and inspiring vision – but not necessarily one you would expect to find in a library. And yet the work of the collective is central to a new exhibition at the British Library in London, which explores and celebrates the social and frequently political history of cultivation, plant acquisition and land use throughout British history. Radicalism is not a term one would always associate with British gardens, but who controls land, who works it and the crops they grow there have always been contested questions, as the exhibition illustrates. Before gardening was a hobby, it was a lifeline – or as a member of Coco Collective puts it in one of the short films displayed as part of the exhibition: 'We've been growing longer than we've been writing books.' Part of the exhibition at the British Library. Photograph: The British Library 'Gardening is much more than the nation's favourite pastime, and we think that it has quite a fascinating and surprising history,' said Maddy Smith, the library's curator of printed heritage collections 1601-1900, and lead curator of the exhibition. The library had previously held exhibitions looking at 'the grander aspects of gardens', she said, but 'we felt that gardening is something that is enjoyed by a lot of different people, and we wanted to reflect that in the objects and the stories that we told.' Among the items on display from the library's collection are an 11th-century illuminated guide to herbal remedies – the only such work to survive from Anglo-Saxon England – and Profitable Instructions of Kitchin Gardens, a book written by the aptly named Richard Gardiner of Shrewsbury, to teach his community how to grow vegetables after a series of disastrous harvests in the 1590s. Common land, once shared by rural communities, had been subject to enclosures – transferring it into private ownership – since England's population plummeted during the plague pandemic of 1348, but it often led to social unrest and revolt. A map from 1791 of the village of Bow Brickhill in Buckinghamshire shows how the land had been carved up between various gentlemen (and some women), with a number of chunks allocated to 'the Rector'. A small outlying patch is 'the Poor's Allotment'. 'We honour Mother Earth and [recognise that] we are intrinsically connected': a Coco Collective gardening session. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Guardian 'People have had to fight for the right to garden over the centuries, and against efforts to privatise and enclose land,' said Smith, 'and we wanted to chart that fight.' As well as documents from the time of the Diggers and Levellers, 17th-century movements demanding land reform, 'we have [material about] gardeners in Levenshulme, near Manchester, planting cabbages as an act of protest.' The Levenshulme land grabbers, as they were nicknamed in 1906, claimed they were cultivating six acres of unfenced church land 'for the benefit of the unemployed'. British gardens have never been purely functional or decorative spaces, as this exhibition illustrates. The early nineteenth century craze for orchids – beautifully illustrated in books from the time – decimated the ecosystems from which they were taken. The Royal Navy's lust for New Zealand flax led it to kidnap two Māori chiefs in 1788 and order them to teach them how to cultivate it (the men refused, not least because this, to them, was women's work). Even a beautifully illustrated plan of Capability Brown's lawns at Blenheim Palace dating to 1771 is presented in the context of the grass monoculture it helped inspire in the British landscape. It is displayed alongside an irreverent modern poster by the artist Sam Wallman that decries lawns as 'a symbol of control, dominance and status'. 'Hoes over mows,' it reads. Unearthed: The Power of Gardening is at the British Library until 10 August
