Our community interest company was built upon the ethics and principles of permaculture, and biodynamic farming.
What we do
✿ Teach over 50 primary school children every week how to grow their own food using agroecological approaches and develop systems thinking through permaculture.
✿ Encourage and establish seed saving within local communities and advocate for slow food, local food, seed and food sovereignty.
✿ Develop school allotments and other spaces for community food growing, wellbeing and biodiversity using permaculture design and biodynamic approaches.
✿ Care for honeybees gently using natural and biodynamic approaches.
✿ Fund our earth and people care activities through a product range based on transparent short supply chains and regenerative farming.
CropWell
A brand new project working in collaboration with a pub and brewery, local Scouts and villagers. The ultimate aim is to develop a market garden providing locally grown food to the pub and develop Scouts entrepreneurship, alongside being an accessible green space for the community. Please see the additional project pin for CropWell on the map for more information (or visit our website).
School Allotment
We maintain a local primary school allotment, which children have access to during our weekly Friday teaching sessions, practical experiences during their day to day lessons, mindfulness sessions, and outdoor liturgy. The allotment is cared for using organic and ecological principles, focused on building soil health and developing closed loop systems including rainwater catchment, composting and wood chipping, seed saving, and recycling. We are also an Eco School team lead, and help the elected Eco Club members to develop sustainability targets and goals, in order to achieve their annual Green Flag award.
Our allotment sessions teach over 50 primary children each week from all year groups (Foundation to Year 6 - EYFS, KS1, KS2). Our curriculum develops the children’s horticultural skills throughout their school years. Starting at EYFS exploring the garden, plant identification, and learning how to use garden tools, through to older children developing permaculture designs and systems thinking, to building and repairing structures in the garden. The children get to pick which crops they would like to grow throughout the school year, and are able to follow their chosen fruits and vegetables from seed to harvest.
Other work
We have been heavily involved with seed sovereignty campaigning, seed library organising, running seed and food justice workshops, development of grant funding, council operations and local food insecurity networks, natural beekeeping, building of gardens for alternative provision, educational horticulture workshops for children and more. We also maintain our own private food production spaces.
Our Team
✿ Xanthea Heynes - Founder/Director
Doctoral Candidate in Agricultural Sciences, MSc Global Food Security
✿ George Turner - Head Gardener/Director
Professional gardener for over 15 years and former school farm manager.
✿ Bethan McIlroy - Director
Consultant for Urban Agriculture Consortium and Farmstart Network in Nottinghamshire.
✿ Sarah Taylor - Director
Environment manager, ecologist for Wildlife Trust/HS2 and former educational horticulturist.