Hulme Community Garden Centre

Hulme Community Garden Centre is based on a two acre site in the heart of Manchester. Established over twenty years ago the garden centre's core aim was to be "A garden centre with a difference that makes a difference". 

At that time, Hulme and neighbouring Moss Side were high on the deprivation index and the founders saw that growing could be a great means of bringing the community together and tackling mental health issues. 

The site is owned by Manchester Council, who lease it to the garden centre at a peppercorn rent. They are registered as both a community benefit society and also have charitable status, helping them to both negotiate their new 30 year lease with the council and to apply for much needed funding. 

Fast forward to today, the garden centre is not only a great source of plants, but also exemplary in terms of the many ways that they have designed the project to benefit their local community. It is also an education and training centre and an accredited permaculture demonstration (LAND) site. 

Cath Gavin started volunteering at the project in 2007 whilst taking a break from paid work. With her background in biology, conservation and therapeutic horticulture, she was given a lot of trust and opportunities at the garden and claims that she "found her second home" here. Through being able to take on extra responsibilities, firstly in the nursery and then working regularly in the shop, she regained her sense of purpose and discovered what she wanted to do in life. 

After a few years at the garden, she did a permaculture design course at Ragmans Lane farm. The course helped her to really pause and think about how they were designing systems at the garden centre, how they could increase yields and stack multiple functions together. "It's really useful when working with kids" says Cath, " It helps you to ask questions to encourage them to think in a joined up way." 

Cath is now one of the key movers and shakers at the garden centre, working with volunteer groups, supporting corporate away days, doing consultancy work in the community and teaching classes on site. Her story is not unique. Many of the centre staff started as volunteers, other volunteers have gone on to set up their own gardening businesses. 

There is a general volunteering day on Wednesday plus a Woodworking volunteer session every Tuesday morning. A wellbeing group provides gentle gardening activities on a Monday and on Friday mornings they offer supported sessions for adults with special educational needs. On Thursday's the team facilitate a parent and toddler group in the morning and in the afternoon provide activities for older home-educated kids. 

Volunteers can access the online form on the website to apply for volunteering sessions. This helps the staff to ascertain the level of experience the volunteer has and the level of support they may need, so they can signpost them to the appropriate session and avoid any potential safeguarding issues. 

A walk with Cath through the garden centre takes you through multiple 'ecosystems'. We start at the shop, which is made from shipping containers where rainwater is harvested from the roof. Passing Cafe Sorrel, a CIC vegetarian cafe with seasonal menu, we enter the main retail area that is bursting with edibles, perennials, pollinator friendly species and pond plants. 

Although most of the perennials are bought in, all of their vegetable plants are grown from seed. A covered area offers cheap refills of household cleaning supplies and in the neighbouring shed you can buy several blends of bird food by the scoop plus bird boxes and bug hotels made by volunteers at the weekly woodworking group.

Beyond the retail space, there is a forest garden, which serves as a stock garden for many of their edible perennials, a woodland area, kitchen garden, woodland area, wildlife pond, two polytunnels, a woodwork shop and wild playground. These wrap around the impressive strawbale classroom, which was built by volunteers and used for workshops, meetings and film nights. 

The woodland area has a dance floor and a firepit in the centre, that is used for outdoor cooking and storytelling. This space, alongside the polytunnels and strawbale classroom are available for community hire.

It also houses their community pizza oven, made with leftover clay from an art and dance project, made from melted knives and guns to raise awareness about violent crime in in the area. 

The garden centre provides a design and implementation consultancy service with other local growing projects and allows groups to set up an 'account' where they can deposit a lump sum and buy plants as they need them. 

There are four free community celebrations at the Garden Centre every year, including their popular potato day, where visitors can play potato crazy golf (harder than it sounds), eat potato based food and buy as many or little seed potatoes as they'd like.  

In the warmer months they host a summer party, a pumpkin and apple day to celebrate autumn abundance and Winterfest, where there are stalls of local produce, delicious food and christmas trees to buy. 

These events serve as a gentle introduction to growing and they make sure that they are able to accommodate even the smallest of growing spaces, as many of the local residents live in flats and have no access to a garden. Compost is available by the scoop, affordable pots are on sale and staff are on hand to provide encouragement and advice.

In 2019, they launched their community share offer which gave the community an opportunity to invest in the garden centre, so that they could develop their site and expand their range of activities so that more people can enjoy what they have on offer. 

The local community is at the heart of HUlme Community Garden Centre, and community engagement has been considered at each stage of their design. Many locals enjoy it as a quiet place to sit, enjoy nature and to bring their kids to play in the permaculture playground. It is open 7 days a week and its facilities are free for the community to enjoy. 

Hulme Community Garden Centre serves as a one stop shop for inspiration, ideas, plants, materials, advice, education and sanctuary for all local people.