Grow Cardiff

Grow Cardiff’s vision is to support local people to transform uninspiring urban spaces into productive, nature-filled, buzzing hubs. We’re a grassroots, multi award-winning small charity with a big heart and a tenacious approach, demonstrated through our 10 year track record of pioneering and inclusive work. As the spaces we work in begin to thrive, so do the people: together we work to transform lives through the power of community gardening into connected, supportive, healthier and empowered, joyful individuals and communities. Our hands-on workshops and long-term development of gardens with communities provide wonderfully supportive environments to engage everyone from 2-year olds in nurseries, through to elderly people who are isolated. Our staff, highly skilled in social therapeutic horticulture practice, expertly use community gardening as a tool that offers hands-on learning about nature, how to grow fruit and vegetables to harvest, share and delight and provides a platform for a host of personal and community development. Often imperceptibly, as people lose themselves in the garden, they find themselves again. Participants tell us working in our gardens is a springboard to newfound confidence, mental and physical health, skills, friendship, community, love for nature and often a stepping stone into something brand new: volunteering, employment, or an opportunity or way of seeing themselves, they would never have even considered before.

Our successful start-up is growing. We now use community gardening to deliver work streams focusing on:

Health: our ‘Grow Well’ social prescribing project supports mental & physical health and wellbeing.

Education: through the Edible Playgrounds in partnership with Trees for Cities we’re supporting over 30 Cardiff primary schools to grow.

Community: mentoring and consultancy: we use our experience to share best practice and support other groups and organisations to grow.