The project serves the communities of South West Cardiff (Ely, Caerau, Canton, Riverside and Grangetown) and has four sites: ACE/Dusty Forge Community Centre, Lansdowne Surgery, Riverside Health Centre and Grangetown Medical Practice – the idea being that anyone can pop out of their front door and be in their local garden within 15 minutes. Sessions run every week, right throughout the year.
Using an ‘asset based’ approach – everyone has a gift, skill or experience to share – the project positively engages some of the most isolated and hardest to reach members of the community. It aims to improve health and well-being of those affected by mental health, physical health, loneliness and isolation, working alongside patients as volunteers to co-design, co-produce and sustain thriving community gardens.
It’s really important to know that most people who come to the project have never gardened before and certainly don’t think of themselves as gardeners. Come along to a weekly session and you are always greeted with a big smile, a good cuppa and a broad choice of activities: sowing, planting and harvesting vegetables, fruit and herbs, arts and crafts for the garden, carpentry and building, composting, mulching, developing wildlife habitats, a pond, soup making with veg straight from the garden, simply sitting and listening to the birds, but always banter and friendship