Burnfoot Community Hub, located in Hawick, hosts a range of activities to support the well-being, quality of life, and opportunities of people in the local area. Over the summer of 2024, a programme named ‘Grow Your Own Garden’ was delivered within Burnfoot Community Hub’s garden. This programme was led as a joint partnership comprising Community Learning and Development (CLD) and Burnfoot Community Futures (BCF).
Coreen (CLD Worker) and Joyce (Community Engagement Supervisor and experienced grower) reflected on their partnership approach, the success and opportunities of working together and how growing food can be a worthwhile tool in community learning practice.
How did your garden programme come about?
Joyce: Many properties in Burnfoot have unused garden space; historically, these gardens supported families in feeding themselves. Now, many lie unused and essential food-growing knowledge is being lost.
The Hub’s community garden was funded through Climate Challenge funding to encourage people to grow their own food and to show them how to cook with what they grew.
Coreen: Given the purpose of the garden, Joyce and I identified six learners who we thought might be interested in the opportunity to learn more about growing and who would be keen and available to attend. Five group members have gardens and one a doorstep and wanted to learn more about how they could use them.
We accessed funding from Multiply through the Scottish Borders Council to hire the space and cover Joyce’s time supporting our growing sessions, which we held in the Hub community garden. We grew tatties, pizza sauce (tomato, basil, and onion), lettuce, strawberries, and courgettes.
How does food growing support CLD outcomes?
Coreen: This project’s community learning development role is about enriching the lives of people who may not have the same access to resources by offering and supporting them to attend informal learning opportunities around growing food using local resources. Accessing the garden space at the Hub to support our work has been amazing and has provided ongoing opportunities in the Burnfoot community to our learners/participants. Other CLD colleagues in the Scottish Borders take a similar approach, regularly using food growing spaces as venues to support an informal and effective approach to connecting, learning and much more. People have developed confidence and relationships locally and now have an awareness of other learning and engagement opportunities available to them as a route to progressing their learning and staying connected in their communities.
We began the garden programme by measuring out a small area in the garden that the learners could replicate at home. Learning about food growing also develops numeracy skills, such as measuring size and distance between crops, covering concepts such as ratio when we look at composting, etc. All the learners have since come together to complete the Level One Food Hygiene Course, and we have grown, cooked, and served our own food in the Hub space. We aren’t looking to be Master Chefs, but the soup tastes great!
Do you need to have growing skills yourself to run this type of activity?
Coreen: No, I was initially terrified, as I hadn’t grown my own food. I learned along with the participants, supporting Joyce in organising the programme and sessions. I started heavily reliant on Joyce for the growing skills content. However, I quickly learned that growing is about trial and error – like life really, sometimes things work, and sometimes they don’t. I think people are reassured by the fact that we are learning with them. ‘Growing your own Garden’ was a revelation; it was very easy to grow potatoes and possibly has changed how people look at food and how they use it; learning about how far our food has travelled and how fresh it is …one of the group had recently arrived from Caribbean islands, sharing their experience of a very different approach to food culture, they have transformed their garden space.
How do you measure the programme’s success?
Coreen: We mostly take a qualitative approach to measuring our impact. We also ask learners to measure their own levels of self-confidence in learning new skills at the beginning and end of the programme, we have been privileged to witness a positive change in their confidence, well-being and enjoyment as they progress through the weeks. This group has bonded well, supporting and encouraging each other with their garden growing and some of them have gone on to volunteer with Joyce at the Hub or join other community groups in the area.
What next?
Coreen: We have plans to repeat the programme with the participants who are keen to share their learning with others, and this time they’d be facilitators supporting brand-new growers to develop their skills.
The Hub runs an annual ‘Burnfoot Potato Challenge’ competition encouraging people to try and grow something at home. We shall use this opportunity to identify further potential learners in the future.
Advice to others working in Community Learning and Development?
Coreen: Know your community, identify and learn about its needs and aspirations, and, wherever possible, partner with a third-sector partner. Hopefully, everyone has a Joyce in their community!
Joyce: We have shared our skills and maximised the opportunity to support people’s connections with each other. In this instance, we started by learning one new thing: food growing. Through that, learners have developed their confidence and made connections to the wider community through the Hub. We work together to encourage the progression of learning both as families and individuals to enrich everyone’s experience.
See what else the Hub are up to here.
