“It all begins with this plot of land, our secret garden,” explains founder Michael French. From people in recovery and rehabilitation to young families looking to learn about how to ‘grow their own’, Grounded Community is passionate and varied.
“This morning for example, we’ve got someone with us who’s in recovery, someone who’s come via NHS social prescribing for their physical wellbeing, and volunteers from Cycling Rebellion, as well as asylum seekers from the International Care Network.
Angela Gray, Marketing and Communications Co-ordinator at Grounded Community, adds: “Very often we see volunteer families and home schoolers, and some people are just looking for something to do. Some look for human connection, and some are really passionate about the cause itself, wanting to share skills and learn how to grow healthy and nutritious food.”
Grounded Community’s Secret Garden, situated directly behind St Clement’s Church in Boscombe, was inspired by an experience that Michael, a Bournemouth based DJ and performer, describes as a ‘divine daydream’. He says: “I had this dream – not necessarily generated by me – that there’d be food shortages in the future, and that we’d need to grow more food ourselves.”
“I held onto the idea for about ten years, and then in 2014, I came to the Garden to interview Alan Kenny, who had set up the space and wanted to help people subsidise income through food and plant growing. About a year later, we began an enterprise, and I took on a site in the New Forest that grew vegetables for cafes and restaurants. It was great, but I still wanted to encourage more people to grow their own food, so we set ourselves on becoming a charity.
“Over the next years, others joined and really worked on building our setup here, then the pandemic struck and emergency COVID funding helped us to grow. Our turnover here exhausts quickly because as soon as we raise it, we invest it back into our work. Our staff workforce and amazing trustees follow a ‘holacratic structure’, we all receive a flat rate of pay, and we have around 170 people offering us their time and experience for free as volunteers.”
Talbot Village Trust supported Grounded Community with core costs and the build of a new outdoor kitchen, and more recently, the team have worked hard to reach deeper into the community; exploring how shops, businesses and hospitality venues can reduce their own food waste and help people in need.
Angela says: “Feeding the community is one of our main projects and our food box scheme gathers 1.5 tonnes a week of surplus food from 60 local supermarkets, which we then redistribute to up to 100 families a week.
The project started as Boscombe Community Fridge, before merging with us when we became a charity. Clients visit the Bournemouth Foodbank on Haviland Road, where Feed Our Community lives to collect food boxes, which include fresh produce grown by volunteers at the garden. Almost 30 volunteers work on this project; and they’re mostly people in the community who’ve benefited from the scheme in the past.”
The Grounded Community has grown massively over the past three years, with more than 1,000 subscribers to our newsletter, built up from an organic base developed through word-of-mouth.
Michael says: “It’s an exciting organisation that we’ve developed, and it’s come from the ground up! Jonno is our teacher and permaculture designer, so he created our permaculture garden plan – it details how natural systems work together; considering natural elements like sun, water, soil, and then adding a framework that brings all these together.
“While we’re a Secret Garden, we also like to think we’re Boscombe’s worst kept secret! We’ve used this space to showcase different ways of growing, raised beds, vertical growing and polytunnels. We’ve also developed processes like our water catchment system, solar power, chicken-keeping, hedgehog homes and supporting natural wildlife. It’s a strong ecosystem and habitat.
“We’ve tried to develop an operation that helps everyone, from partnerships and projects to community schemes like foodbanks and canteens. We’re a local cause, but we have regional impact! So many local people and groups contact us, looking to work together and learn from our experiences, and the core around everything we do is building community resilience. It’s about how we help people to develop skills, subsidise income, and work together alongside the local systems we already have.
“There’s lots of areas we haven’t scratched the surface with yet – for example, there are hundreds of fruit trees in Bournemouth, but 60-70% of that fruit isn’t collected. It falls, it rots and goes back into the soil – it’s wasted, and it could be used! We could collect this fruit, prune the trees, and offer something back in return.”
Through its home growers’ scheme, Grounded Community sets people up with raised beds made from recycled pallet collars. The team train up budding growers to teach them the basics, and then they either grow produce for themselves or help to fulfil vegetable needs for food boxes, run by local Community Interest Companies, like Nurture Our Community.
“It could be as simple as Spring Onions – if you’re the Spring Onion grower for the food box scheme, then you’ll be adding your produce to the boxes, in return for receiving boxes of produce from other growers. Hundreds of people doing this creates a box scheme that’s affordable and sustainable – the more local farms, the better!
“We need to work on infrastructure for more market gardens and lots of organisations, like Soil Association and Land Workers Alliance, are pushing this approach because we need to strengthen a system that’s in trouble. Supporting local farmers, building more market gardens, and growing in our own gardens – these are vital things that all of us can do!
Angela says: “We’re branching out into other areas too, like public spaces and residents’ areas. Local shops, businesses, and hotels can link up with our surplus composting project, which is run in partnership with Bournemouth Coastal BID, and operates on the Sovereign Shopping Centre roof in Boscombe.”
But planting seeds and growing roots doesn’t just happen in polytunnels and planting beds, either. Grounded are growing and sowing in schools across BCP, looking to equip the next generation of urban growers with skills, knowledge, and experience.
“We’ve really reached out to children at the Secret Garden via our Little Gardeners sessions for under 7’s in Spring and Summer, and to schools. We’ve installed raised beds at local schools including Christchurch Junior School and St Peter’s in Bournemouth – schools have funded the beds via their PTFA groups.
“We’re going to hit harder times in the future, so we need to set up systems for local communities to be more resilient and to gain skills – it won’t long before there’s a necessity to grow your own, and we need to grow infrastructure to help support that.”
I’d just lost my mum and was in a bad place. I came down to the Garden, and I thought it was great, so I got stuck in! Despite medication and therapy for my own mental health, this has been by far the best treatment.
Grounded’s work is amazing - in Boscombe there are lots of mental health problems, but you can see how the charity helps people. Growing food for foodbanks and knowing you’re helping others too: they’re outcomes that make you feel part of something.
— Adam, Volunteer
