Last year, Sustainable Merton joined Sustainable Food Places: a partnership programme led by the Soil Association, Food Matters and Sustain which aims to move communities towards a healthy, sustainable, and more equitable food system.
Since October, our Sustainable Food Places programme has progressed well. We have contacted a number of local allotments as well as existing and emerging community gardens to understand how they operate and whether they would like to connect with Merton’s Community Fridge Network. The aim of forging these connections is to share surplus food and get more of the community involved in the learning and enjoying of food in 2021.
This exercise has proved really interesting, informative and exciting. Some projects are small, subsistence plots cared for by groups of local residents who reap the physical and mental benefits of gardening. Others are bigger and open to the wider community to learn how to grow crops, tend the land and make friends. We also have learnt there are some emerging community gardens in the borough and hope to support them in the year to come.
The next steps are to visit some of these gardens and plots with the aim to get to know the gardens and the people who already benefit from community gardening. It is our hope that sustainable relationships will form to support these gardens and the people that use these gardens now and in the future.
The project is open to everyone so for more information about becoming involved in the project please email us at info@sustainablemerton.org. We’d love to hear from you!
Ellie Smallshaw
Projects & Campaigns Coordinator, Sustainable Merton