We're celebrating National Gardening Week this year by highlighting the wide range of beneficial impacts from being involved with a community garden and/ or horticulture therapy project.

Here's some of the ways the group members benefit from joining our community garden.

Building positive networks - Working and growing together can build and strengthen important friendships, positive networks and resilient communities. A supportive network can be essential for those who would usually be isolated due to homelessness, mental and physical health issues, addiction issues and learning disabilities. Our strong community connections have really been highlighted during these troubling times of lockdown as our community members have been supporting and caring for each other by staying in touch by phone, email, text, Instagram. Like Jo and Kim say - “It’s about more than just a bit of gardening”...“We all need each other."

Mental Health and Wellbeing - There is now plenty of evidence that gardening is good for your mental health and horticulture therapy has become widely recognised in the UK. The passive enjoyment of the wind through the trees, the excitement of seeing your seeds pop up through the soil in spring, the sensory delights of having your hands in compost, the sense of achievement from growing or building something new and the physical exercise of gardening increasing serotonin ('happy hormone') levels - These can all help to alleviate mental ill-health, stress and anxiety. Kim says - “When I’m gardening it gives me an escape from my mental health and I love taking home the fresh vegetables from the allotment as it’s something we have grown … it’s a great sense of achievement.“

Learning new skills - such as bee keeping. We're very lucky to have Sarah, our beekeeping mentor as part of our community. Sarah has managed to do some one-to-one training sessions building equipment and maintaining the bee colony with group members during the Covid19 pandemic and is looking forward to more group workshops at the community garden once it's safe to do so.

Healthy Eating - Learning to grow your own fruit, vegetables and herbs can be the first step towards understanding healthy diet and lifestyles. Our group regularly enjoy taking home our produce to share or cook. We also cook healthy vegan food at the community garden to eat together.

Connection to the Natural Environment - Our community supports and encourages the existing wildlife in our diverse ecosystem and we try to work with the natural environment instead of fighting it, for mutual benefits. We have never used chemical pesticides or fertilizers. We have built and encourage a wide variety of habitats including an underground amphibian home; two wildlife ponds for the newts; long grasses and wildflowers for grass snakes and pollinators; and have planted many native shrubs for berries and nesting. Our site backs on to a large common connecting with a wildlife corridor through the city so we have lots of visiting wildlife. This connection with the wider environment can provide understanding and respect for our natural world leading to more ecologically friendly lifestyles, which is essential in this time of climate crisis.

Social Inclusion - Our community group members enjoy working with several local organisations such a Cambridge Sustainable Foods, The Botanical Gardens, Cambridge United Football Supporters Trust and other local gardeners such as the Newnham College team. We also really enjoy holding produce stall in the town through the harvesting season and have regular supporters at the pitch who love our fresh vegetables. We believe in being part of a resilient, local community. The sense of being part of something bigger can be very beneficial for all of us.

There's so many benefits from gardening to celebrate but here's one of our favourite quotes from American urban gardener, Ron Finley that covers it!