Grow Together, Be Together - Improving a Community Garden in East Ham-£20,000

This project will improve a well-used eco-friendly Community Garden in East Ham. It will do this by running weekly garden maintenance workshops for people moving on from homelessness, referred by the charity NEWway.

Participants in the workshops will learn new skills, and they will contribute to the community by helping to repair and maintain the garden, and rejuvenate it after Covid. Working with an experienced gardener, they will help make new signs and wildlife-friendly bird houses, bug hotels and ladybird towers that will entrance local children.

The Community Garden is on the corner of Flanders Field (accessed via Melbourne Road or Wellington Road). It runs free school sessions, and gardening sessions and events for people of all ages and backgrounds, including annual celebrations for Eid, Diwali and Christmas. The food grown in the garden is shared among the volunteers and donated to the nearby Food Bank.

This project covers gardening workshops for 12 homeless adults 8 hours a week for a year, in which they will make repairs and improvements to the garden. Successful participants can go on to paid work with NEWlife gardening social enterprise. The funding will also cover free Gardening Workshops for families on Fridays and Saturdays.