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Growing healthy in Gateshead

A ground-breaking foodbank project is changing lives as well as improving diets

Tinned beans, pasta, rice… typical foodbank donations fill the stomach, but perhaps not the soul. With a little help from the RHS, however, one foodbank now also gives out fresh produce from a garden that’s great for both physical health and mental wellbeing.

In the UK, the demand for emergency food parcels from foodbanks has surged in recent years: the Trussell Trust handed out a staggering 1.5 million in the year to April. A Trussell Trust foodbank runs from Blaydon Methodist Church, close to the southern banks of the Tyne in Gateshead, and is home to a unique collaboration that now helps provide regular free, fresh food to more than 100 people.




Making a difference

Members of the congregation spotted an opportunity in the form of a disused space next to the church, which they decided to turn into a garden to grow fresh food to add to the parcels given out every week. The problem was that they didn't have much gardening knowledge, so they turned to the RHS for help.
 
Through the Greening Great Britain campaign, they were able to access funding and expert advice from community outreach advisor, Christine Wright. The church-side space has been transformed into a productive and pretty garden, brimming with leeks, onions, courgettes, cabbages, purple sprouting broccoli and herbs.

Christine became an RHS Community Outreach Advisor five years ago, and this is her favourite project to date – seeing the difference it makes to people’s lives. 'I’ve found it hugely rewarding that the foodbank’s users have now started asking what’s fresh in the garden, and wanting to learn how to grow it themselves,' she says.
 

 'It's about inspiring change in people to be healthier and happier'


There are mental health benefits too. People visiting the foodbank are encouraged to come into the garden, and volunteer if they can. The garden is always open, people are always welcome. 'It's adding value to a potentially very depressing situation – it's about self-worth,' says Christine.

Local children entitled to free school meals attend the Gateshead Council “Fill The Holiday Gap” scheme at the church. They can come to get a free lunch during the school holidays and have helped to pot up hanging baskets with herbs to take home and small pots of herbs for the foodbank to give away.
 

Plot to plate

The church also provides a soup lunch every Monday, open to all, and the volunteers enjoy harvesting and cooking gluts of fresh produce. Although the garden is still in its early stages, the volunteers are sure that with their new-found gardening skills they will be able to increase the amount of fresh food they can give to those in need. Thanks to these selfless horticultural heroes, that seems a pretty safe bet.
 
The RHS would like to thank M&G Investments for its support of this programme in 2019.
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