Can growing our own food have well-being benefits, help to reduce food poverty, make us healthier, and benefit wildlife?
Nature on your doorstep volunteer Martyn Davies, investigates the benefits of growing your own vegetables
From my perspective the answer is a resounding yes, but that is because the kitchen garden is my happy place, my gym, my contemplative space, and a haven for wildlife. It is surely naïve though to think that growing a few vegetables can have so many positive effects on the wider community, who aren’t all veg gardening nerds with a passion for wildlife like me, and those that are, often don’t have the space for a kitchen garden. (Although many vegetables can be successfully grown in pots even if you only have a balcony or courtyard garden).
Since starting work on a new project with a small Charity in rural Wales, the full potential of ‘growing a bit of veg’ has become clear to me. ‘Tir Coed’ connect people with land (Tir) and woods (Coed) by delivering outdoor learning and well-being programmes www.tircoed.org.uk. At a time when many people are struggling to afford food and are suffering from the inevitable resulting stress and anxiety, the opportunity to grow your own food whilst making new friends seems like a no-brainer, but of course it is not that simple. Even for those lucky enough to have a large garden or access to an allotment, the early stages of Spring optimism are often quashed by a lack of time or knowledge, cultivating a healthy patch of weeds with the occasional obstinate lettuce poking its head through a mat of chickweed. So how do Tir Coed do things differently? and how can we all learn from this model to improve our lives by growing vegetables?
Education
Tir Coed run free 20 week accredited sustainable horticulture courses, teaching people how to grow their own food, as well as arming them with a qualification. These courses are run at community gardens, which often provide small growing areas for individuals and the chance to be a part of a communal/community growing space, which also provides fresh food for the local foodbank. There are community gardens springing up all over the country, find your nearest garden and get involved, if you don't have one nearby there are many grants available to help create new gardens, and councils will often provide unused municipal land for community use, so why not investigate starting your own community garden.
Garden communities toolkit - Guidance - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Learning in the community garden, (Credit: Tir Coed)
Well-Being
Immersing people in nature is at the core of Tir Coed’s philosophy, when you are also making new friends, gaining qualifications, saving money, and making a difference in your local community it is very difficult not to feel better in yourself.
Tir Coed Trainees enjoying a bumper harvest, (Credit: Tir Coed)
How do I cook a celeriac?
One of the most important skills that trainees learn is planning to grow the most suitable crops, avoiding gluts, and extending crop harvests over a long period. To be able to produce cheap, healthy meals from your kitchen garden, you must know what to do with your prize celeriac after you’ve pulled it out of the ground and shared a picture of it on Instagram (because no-one really knows how to cook them if they are being honest). So Tir Coed have partnered with the NHS’s ‘nutrition skills for life’ initiative Nutrition Skills for Life®, which offer free accredited training courses in nutrition and cooking. Which teach people how to cook cheaper, healthier, tastier meals, making the most of the ingredients they can grow.
Can a vegetable garden be wildlife friendly?
With the right attitude and a little know-how, a kitchen garden can be a wildlife haven. Starting in the soil, organic gardening methods such as no-dig (or at least minimal digging), using the correct crop rotations, adding plenty of organic matter and most importantly avoiding using any pesticides, will create a thriving unobserved ecosystem. Although the earthworms won’t be unobserved by hungry robins and blackbirds, and there are many other welcome predators such as hedgehogs and slow worms who will be happy to polish off your slugs (although you will probably have to make peace with losing the odd cabbage). See the RSPB advice for attracting useful predators to your garden:
How to attract slow worms and other reptiles | The RSPB
Hedgehog Facts | What They Eat & Other Facts - The RSPB
Many vegetable crops are fantastic for pollinating insects, and with well-chosen companion planting (where beneficial flowers are interplanted with crops) your kitchen garden will be buzzing with bees as well as useful insects such as ladybirds that will prey on aphids.
Facts About Insects & Invertebrates - The RSPB
Companion planting, and plenty of refuge for wildlife, (Credit: Martyn Davies)
So, can growing our own vegetables make us healthier, happier, knock some money off our monthly food shop and benefit wildlife? Definitely, and we don’t need to lower our expectations, for if we change our perspective and work together, we can create more positive change than even the most optimistic potential gardener could imagine as they thumb through their seed catalogue, pondering whether growing loofas on the shed wall is a little ambitious. So, get out there and plant some veg, if you haven’t got the space, contact your local allotment site or community garden. If you don’t have one, start one, and join the community garden revolution, it will change your life!