The Community Garden Fix
By Cat Acheson
Community gardens can provide solace and vital resources in a future overshadowed by COVID-19 and the climate crisis.
I went to my first community garden open day almost exactly a year ago. I had just moved to London, and I was keen to meet people locally and start to integrate into the community where I lived – something which I, like many young professionals and students, had previously neglected to do. I also wanted an incentive to spend more time outdoors, doing something practical as an antidote to my office-based job in central London. With hindsight, becoming a volunteer at Christchurch School Community Garden in Greenwich was the best decision I could have made. None of us could have known, in the pre-pandemic days of 2019, how much of a lifeline this small green space in the middle of the city would become.
At the height of lockdown last spring, volunteering at the garden was an enormous privilege. It provided a sanctuary where volunteers could get fresh air, peace and quiet without breaking the rules. Even with strict limitations on the number of people who could be in the space at any given time, spending one afternoon a week with at least one other human being did a lot to offset the horror of finding ourselves in such an unnatural state of isolation. The work we did cultivating different food crops throughout the spring and summer months proved to be a valuable exercise in accepting delayed gratification, as all the usual plans and expectations of life fell away. Making friends with people who lived around the corner was also deeply reassuring: if anything happened to me or my flatmate, there were people nearby who could help us, and vice-versa.
Now, in the still-warm days of autumn, the crops are being harvested enthusiastically. Tomatoes, potatoes, onions, courgettes, kale, chillies, beetroot and jars of East Greenwich Honey from our own beehives are making their way out into the community via a growing network of local residents. Sadly, there can't be any open days or events this year, but the garden remains a hub of activity. In fact, as the UK faces up to the prospect of a winter of rising COVID-19 infections and more enforced isolation, community gardens are one of the few not-for-profit social spaces that can be sustained.
The practical benefits of community food-growing initiatives are clear. With 8.4 million people in the UK experiencing food poverty, and the coming recession and unemployment wave guaranteed to make things far worse, community gardens can be an equitable and dignified source of good-quality food. Lack of access to fresh fruit and vegetables is one of the key indicators of food poverty, and so the ability to grow and distribute fruit and vegetables within communities that often lack access to them is a positive step towards achieving food justice. Green spaces also improve health and well-being, reduce air pollution levels and their associated health impacts, and can boost children’s learning, helping to address issues of social inequality in deprived urban areas.
Concerns about food security also abounded during the early days of the pandemic, as the weaknesses of the UK food system were exposed. With over 80% of our food imported from overseas, and the virus threatening to disrupt a system heavily reliant on cheap seasonal labour from primarily Eastern European workers who travel across borders to harvest our food, COVID-19 put the UK’s food supply in a precarious position. Meanwhile, overnight changes in consumer shopping habits, as people started buying weeks-worth of food at a time, left supermarket shelves empty. We were made painfully aware of the extent to which globalisation has undermined local resilience. Climate change, and the droughts, desertification, floods and crop failures it will bring, will see these problems multiply in the years and decades to come, as would a no-deal Brexit. There is a growing awareness that we need to radically reshape our food system, with a far greater focus on local produce, sustainable farming methods, and fair employment practices. Greater support and resources for community food projects could be part of this transformation.
COVID-19 has also highlighted a range of additional – and equally vital – benefits that community gardens can offer in the uncertain future we face. In times of crisis we intuitively want to group together for support, but the virus is requiring us to do the opposite. The bitter irony is that community services and civil society groups are needed more than ever, as the economic impacts of the pandemic leave many in desperate need of practical and psychological support. As we can probably all agree, Zoom is a poor substitute for in-person contact. The new ban, in most of the UK, on entering other people’s homes (while group socialising in pubs and restaurants is still actively encouraged, because there’s money involved), will be devastating for people’s health and well-being. Young people, single adults living alone or in inadequate shared accommodation, and older people who are already marginalised will be particularly badly affected. Community gardens are spaces which could go some of the way in alleviating these pressures in the coming months.
Community gardens can be managed in a more structured way than public parks, and are often more secluded and secure. They could, for example, be opened at certain times exclusively for certain groups – like youth groups, social clubs, or mental health support groups. Protected green spaces like these could also be used by families and small groups of friends for socialising and recreation, especially in built-up areas where people lack access to gardens and there are no parks within easy walking distance. And with schools, universities and colleges under enormous pressure to provide a business-as-usual standard of education in conditions that are terribly suited to controlling a virus, more opportunities for outdoor learning wouldn’t go amiss, if educational institutions could get access to these spaces.
None of this is to say that community gardens, which are primarily run by volunteers, should be burdened with sole responsibility for delivering these societal benefits. Nor should they be expected to compensate for the failure of the government to meet citizens’ basic needs during an economic and public health crisis. All too often, sudden top-down enthusiasm for grassroots initiatives is used as a distraction from cuts to community services, and ideological opposition to supporting the vulnerable in society. It would also be naïve to suggest that community gardens can offer a singular solution to huge structural problems like food insecurity, social injustice and mental ill-health. Weather conditions alone, in the colder months of the year, substantially limit the wider impact community gardens and other green spaces can have. However, if they were woven into a multi-faceted, robust and ambitious Green Recovery Plan, the benefits they bring could be multiplied, and would ultimately form part of the picture for a more resilient society.
It will take work. To be successful, community gardens require an enormous amount of hard work and dedication behind the scenes. To keep things ticking over, you need a core team of people with a broad base of practical skills and knowledge, who can organise the less experienced, casual volunteers. You need people skills, admin skills, relationships with local community networks, and an understanding of funding and awards application processes to get the project going in the first place, and to keep it afloat in the face of significant challenges. Even social media and PR skills can make a big difference. Then of course you need to have the free time and the resources to take on this work, which unfortunately excludes a lot of people.
The challenge of finding adequate resources and expertise to sustain community gardens long-term suggests that we shouldn’t over-emphasise their potential to fix society’s ills. But the good news is that these initiatives also have the potential to provide a wealth of new jobs and opportunities, if they are prioritised in a national green economic recovery plan. Community organisations, schools, NGOs and local authorities throughout the UK could be given resources to create new community gardens, which could be maintained by paid employees with a diverse range of skill-sets and experience. Community gardening schemes could also provide structured training opportunities for young people, who would gain the skills to move into newly-created green jobs.
The summer is over, and any optimism about a “return to normal” has been exposed as a dangerous fantasy. There’s now no escaping the fact that COVID-19 is here to stay, and we’re distressingly close to tipping back into the disaster of the first wave. We need a long-term strategy that doesn’t rest on false assurances, or focus on restoring a “business as usual” scenario that, for better or worse, is now a thing of the past. At this critical juncture, political decision-makers need to be asking: what kinds of projects and initiatives are well-suited to weathering this kind of crisis, and delivering broad social benefits when future disruption is inevitable? Community gardens tick all the boxes, not just in the case of COVID-19, but for future shocks to society and the economy from climate change and resource scarcity as well.
On an emotional level, if all we can do in these trying circumstances is adapt as best we can, then it’s comforting to know that there are still opportunities for working together and achieving something positive. Meeting up with your neighbour to dig some potatoes in a patch of ground outside a local primary school might not make all your problems disappear, but it is a way of clawing back a sense of purpose and connection with others. With so much outside of our control – from the spread of the virus, to job security, to the climate crisis – these simple regenerative moments are priceless. Let’s make sure we can all have more of them.
