Engaging 100 households in community food growing, seasonal cooking and garden biodiversity through their own growing spaces.

Maxwell Centre

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Addressed Challenges:

  • Health and Wellbeing
  • Waste / Circular Economy
  • Biodiversity Loss
  • Greater Fairness / Just Transition

Action Areas:

  • Biodiversity and Nature
  • Land Use, Food and Agriculture

Initiative Purpose:

  • Mitigation and Adaptation

The Story

Butterfly sitting on a pink flower

WHY?

In Dundee, food is central to addressing local climate justice as well as its impact on greenhouse emissions. As well as increasing access to more affordable, nutritious food we want more of it to be grown sustainably and support soil and biodiversity. To achieve this we need to work with communities that can showcase and promote sustainable lifestyles through real life experiences.

 

WHAT?

Our project team and community gardens engaged with 100 Dundee households who were part of an exciting city-wide challenge to learn and develop their very own food growing space and cook with local fruit and veg. They were supplied with a personalised growing kit, tools and materials as well as one to one advice and support. For example, a kit for a small garden included: Potatoes, Alliums- chives & onions, Herbs, Outdoor bush tomatoes & chillies, Salad leaves, Brassicas- sprouts, sprouting Broccoli, kale, Roots- radish & carrots, Edibles- Calendula, Nasturtiums & Sunflowers, Peas & beans, Strawberries, raspberry canes, blackcurrants, rhubarb. The kits were adapted for community spaces or schools and also for those with just windowsills.

 

HOW?

Each of these growing spaces has been an example of how to be climate friendly, increase biodiversity and attract pollinators. We’ve showcased how food can be grown in all types of spaces, from backies to allotments, window sills to streets and by all types of families, with different backgrounds and from different areas.

The 100 “growers” have gone through a programme of 18 food growing, cooking and sustainability workshops throughout the seasons (basic gardening skills, outdoor cooking, urban foraging, plant medicine, citizen science, etc.) This has allowed participants to develop the skills and experience to pioneer sustainable growing and using fresh and home grown fruit and vegetable with affordable healthy ingredients or food that could be going to waste.

 

COMMUNICATIONS

The public has got to know many of the 100 local “growers” families to be inspired and learn along with their stories and challenges through our web page and comprehensive communications campaign. We have shared their journey, through engagement with our network of community gardens and a further 20 social organisations across the city, a dedicated video channel, the Grow Dundee website and Facebook group, local media outlets and printed promotional materials.

We delivered an Open Day for all Community Growing Spaces and 4 neighbourhood community food events, including “Big Bake Offs” and tastings with local produce, food that could go to waste and foraged food was a huge opportunity to engage with many more people.

 

RECRUITMENT

The 104 food growers were recruited through the Dundee Network of Community Gardens. The first phase of our communications campaign focused on this task. Posters and flyers were distributed at over 10 existing events, garden sessions (over 150 volunteers), schools, after school clubs, libraries and other 3rd sector organisations advertising spaces. There was a social media campaign for online recruitment (we had 2000 people interested in growing signed up to Grow Dundee Facebook group) and two online forms were designed for people and families to apply and to provide the information we needed to assess suitability and needs.

Success & Outcomes

100% of those interviewed felt supported throughout the Big Grow process and said that it was easy to follow the programme thanks to newsletters and emails. Also, our Big Grow workshops and events helped people to feel overall more confident, more connected socially, more relaxed and happier. Offering a range of different types of workshops has allowed us to encourage different types of people to engage in our centre.

 

Majority of folk reported higher confidence in food growing. From first steps to those who have developed large gardens or allotments and cooked with the produce. But there are still many who lack the confidence to do it without any guidance and have signed up again for 25/26. Participants also pinpointed the indirect benefits of learning a new skill: an increased sense of confidence and empowerment. Participants don’t just confirm that they learned the new skill which was the reason they chose to sign up for the workshop, they report “getting excited about the process,” that they gained “the confidence to start doing things” and that they learned skills which they are “excited to try at home.” This shows that the workshops are offering something more meaningful than just an increase in knowledge for our participants, they allow participants to feel a sense of self-efficacy and direction that they perhaps had not at the beginning of the day.

 

Many reported on how they have enjoyed meeting other local food growers/ developing friendships. It was particularly striking to us, the emphasis placed on the social aspects of the workshops in many of the reflections, when very few responses cited the opportunity for a social experience as a driving factor for them to sign up in the first place. This suggests that the format of the workshop, the facilitators, the setting, or a combination of the three is useful for supporting a pleasant and sociable atmosphere that stuck out to participants just as much as the knowledge and practical skills which they had been hoping to gain.

 

There was also an interesting shift in focus to the connection with nature, the sensory and experiential aspects of the workshops in participants’ reflective responses. One participant wrote “listening to birdsong while working is blissful. Very very inspiring” and others highlighted “smelling plants,” “touching plants” and tasting the products they made as some of the best parts of the workshop for them.  It is perhaps a result of this sensory experience that one participant writes:

 

 "I always feel revitalised and invigorated after the workshops."  

 

 

See some quotes from participant’s feedback:

 

Lali

What was your favourite part of the project? 

"As a first time allotmenteer, everything felt daunting and uncertain. The Big Grow and other projects delivered from the MaxWell Centre were a source of great support, from providing seeds, seedlings, tools, etc. to information, guidance and reassurance."

What went well? 

"There were no huge achievements, but, for example, eating a home-grown tomato or nutrient-packed microgreens grown at the windowsill was quite an experience! This season I feel more knowledgeable and confident about growing vegetables."

What have you learned?

"I have a better idea about sowing, harvesting and methodologies. Battling bugs, slugs and other little besties is still an ongoing endeavour.

"Focus your efforts and trust the process. Not everything will go to plan, and there are factors out with our control that will probably change the course of things and final outcome. Try, learn and repeat."

 

Karen

What was your favourite part of the project? 

"Getting to know other growers and about their experience. Met lots of them at the special big grow evenings which were great, really enjoyed them and the knowledge learned from the events."

What didn't go well?

"Plants eaten by slugs, snails & birds! Cats digging up the garden! My carrots were very poor, sleeper grew, and that's supposed to be easy. My lettuce was growing nicely until the slugs got them. So I learned the importance of protecting the crop."

Why have you decided to enroll in the project again this year?

"It was so much fun and such a big learning curve last year. I want to try different veg this year to see if I'm more successful in growing them and a few I did last year to see if I have improved in growing them with my new improved knowledge. I enjoyed being out in the fresh air and the buzz of being in the garden. I am looking forward to seeing what the Big Grow have planned for this year's events in the evenings!"

 

Graham

"Last season was a great success not just the growing but the spin offs. Residents interest and participation,bringing the wider community. We developed intergenerational links between Brington Sheltered Housing Complex and Craigiebarns Nursery.Hope and RSPB."

 

Susan G

"My favourite part - becoming part of a “growing community” and being made to feel very welcome every time I visited."

Advice for others looking to do something similar

We were quite ambitious in aiming to recruit 100 households for this project, but in just a month we managed to hit our target, we were very encouraged by such interest! We had the support of a few volunteers putting out posters and attending events to publicise the project and also a wide sharing across the city by our many partner and friend organisations.

 

We had to develop quite detailed schedules for our staff to be able to plan all the growing kits content, fit in the growing from seed in our own space and support from other gardens such as Campy Growers for participants, purchase of plants, visiting gardens, giving advice and resources out. We also set up a contact database to keep track of participants and forms to sign up and upload photos of their growing spaces, preferred fruit and veg to grow.

 

We were keen to do a new project but one that would feed into existing already very inspiring projects at the Maxwell and across the city. It was great for us to be able to introduce Big Grow participants to community gardens close to them, to Wildlife projects and our own Tool and Seed Library, and complement our workshop programme which we made sure would also include biodiversity themes and seasonal cooking skills as well as food growing basics and climate friendly gardening practices.

 

It was challenging to keep on top of so many communications, requests to visit and for advice and specific plants but we were lucky to have the support of the whole Maxwell team and to create a very considerate community that was mindful of the work going on behind the scenes and also offered peer support to other participants and the project, This was a very important and unexpected outcome. We also set up the Gardeners Café as an offshoot of the Big Grow especially to cover the winter months when it was cold outside and we could dedicate more time to sorting seeds, planning the growing year ahead, preserving, etc.

 

For another organisation trying to replicate this project we’d recommend:

  • Check your capacity and flexibility as a team – consider splitting participants between staff members to strengthen one-to-one relationships. Keep track of your communications with individuals to make sure nobody falls through the cracks and gets missed out!
  • Events and workshops take a lot of planning, preparation and cleaning up afterwards! Try to get participants to give a hand, especially if food is involved and make sure you comply with all Health and Safety and Food Hygiene legal obligations.
  • Booking for events or sessions is easier if mainstreamed via a website or a Google Form, the same for participant surveys as this can take a lot of admin time to keep updated. Communicating via social media channels is timely and can get confusing!
  • Always leave time and spaces for participants to mingle and get to share their own experiences. Food growing can be quite hit and miss, especially when you are starting out so peer support is very reassuring and beautiful gardener friendships develop!
  • Having food growing experience, skills and expertise within your team is essential to be able to deliver some workshops in house and provide the one to one advice.
  • Growing on thousands of plants for participants takes up A LOT of space in the garden – make sure your plan ahead where things will go and make sure you label them clearly.
  • Record people’s details and activities as part of the project so you can know how their journey has been.
  • Keeping in touch regularly through a newsletter was key for people to feel engaged and get the latest activities and news in their inbox as well as being able to pop in any Thursday for in-person advice.
  • Remember you are building on participant’s skills so the second year will probably require less individual coaching (we are already appreciating this)