Manchester Urban Diggers
Our objectives
We are community market gardeners who are looking to create a food system change in Manchester by providing hyper local, organically grown fresh produce to the local community whom many are currently experiencing food poverty in Manchester. Our goal is to create a network of small food producing gardens around GM which we hope will help alleviate these problems. At the same time & equally as important is our involvement with the community. We offer the space to the local community to host workshops, events, volunteer sessions, social prescribing sessions (horticultural therapy), with benefits including improving community cohesiveness, improving mental health, decreasing social isolation & community upskilling & education.
The focus of our endeavour is sustainability. We believe that to facilitate these activities permanently we need dedicated community garden manager(s) - this is why the community market garden model is ideal. We aim to make each garden we create self sustainable - any money made goes back into the garden to help it grow and flourish.
We are a community interest company - this means we have to work towards fulfilling our main objects that we chose when setting up;
- Grow & sell fresh, local seasonal produce using natural farming methods to the local community and businesses at fair prices
- Host therapeutic gardening sessions for the community with the aim to improve their physical & mental well-being
- Activities including consulting on, creating & maintaining new community gardens for the benefit of local residents and community groups
- Develop spaces for and host regular volunteer sessions and events for diverse groups to promote community cohesion
- Promote sustainable local food production and a healthy lifestyle
Our activities
We have already been successful with this model. For the past 3 years we have been developing Platt Fields Market Garden (PFMG), a garden based on Platt Fields Park in Fallowfield. PFMG is a grassroots green infrastructure project that developed slowly with the help of dedicated volunteers. Over the 3 years we transformed an old disused bowling green (that otherwise would be costing the council to maintain) to a thriving garden.
Here is a quick summary of our work on the Park at Platt Fields Market Garden;
- We maintain over an acre of park land that would otherwise be disused and costly to maintain
- We log over 300 hours per week in volunteer times which will increase once restrictions have been lifted and we can have more volunteers on site.
- We attract many additional people to the park to buy our veg boxes and loose veg - fresh local produce which has been organically grown. We currently sell 25-30 boxes a week.
- We run a weekly food based mini market with local makers which attracts many people from the community.
- We get countless comments every week telling us how lovely the garden is and how proud they are of us and to live in an area which has a community garden like ours.
- We are open to people from all demographics - we aim to improve community cohesion in the area and have chats with people from all over.
- We run workshops to educate people about growing food, making compost, the benefits of growing etc
- We offer a space for people in the community to come and experiment with their ideas such as brewing beer from hops & fruit, creating pickles, chutneys etc.
- We run wellbeing gardening sessions in collaboration with the NHS and housing associations with people who suffer from mental health problems such as social isolation, anxiety & depression
- We have recently worked with the NHS Buzz team to create over 500 gardening kits for people in self isolation
- We are working with the NHS to create relaxing meditation videos with our garden as the backdrop to help people in self isolation connect with nature.
We also help maintain a rooftop garden in Stockport in collaboration with renowned chef Sam Buckley who owns the restaurant ‘Where The Light Gets In’. He will be using the space to host events, supper clubs and free community workshops.
In NOMA in Manchester, we designed and now maintain PATCH, a small growing area near the coop in collaboration with the Old Bank residency. We host free events for the community, the food / herbs can be picked & used for free by the community or it goes into the meals provided by the Old Bank.
We also help with other food related projects such as Gleaning, where we harvest produce from farmers fields that would otherwise go to waste and deliver it to community groups and charities that need it.