RHS Wisley: Community Gardening Meet-up
The RHS fifth Community Gardening Meet-Up took place at RHS Garden Wisley, with more than 80 participants attending from local organisations, exploring the theme of Sustainability and Small Space Gardening
Martha Swales, an avid urban gardener from London who has been growing her own produce for 12 years, gave a keynote talk ‘Give it a Grow’. Martha shared tips for gardening in small spaces and ways of making gardening more sustainable. Martha has recently released her first book and has built an Instagram following of over 1 million followers: www.instagram.com/marfskitchengarden
“It’s been inspiring to meet so many people who are using the incredible power of gardening to improve their local area and the people who live there.” - Martha Swales
A Gardeners' Question Time style panel saw Martha join the RHS's Rob Brett, Curator RHS Garden Wisley, Mark Tuson, RHS Garden Manager and Hayley Jones, RHS Principal Entomologist – as well as Cat Huckle, Lead Psychologist for Surrey at Dose of Nature, a charity that promotes the mental health benefits of engaging with the natural world and Clare Millington from Rosamund Community Garden Guildford, an inspirational community garden in Guildford, Surrey. The panel answered questions on topics ranging from slugs to how to engage volunteers and the wellbeing benefits of gardening.
“The knowledge in the room was a great complement to the knowledge on stage for the Gardeners’ Question Time panel. This type of event enables the sharing of skills to common challenges people face at grassroots level.” - Claire Custance, RHS Senior Communities Manager
The day also included activity sessions covering topics such as fundraising and simple gardening projects like growing microgreens.
There were plenty of networking opportunities and a marketplace enabled local charities and community groups to showcase their amazing work. Hiddy Denizer from Action for Carers Surrey enjoyed the opportunity to network with so many other organisations. Karen Blight from It’s Your Neighbourhood group Farncombe Community Garden thought the event was a great opportunity to link up people from different sectors in the local area.
“Today has shown the importance of bringing groups together to share knowledge and ideas. Some of the organisations have community gardens while others have a different focus such as youth work, but gardening helps them facilitate what they do.” - Lettie Irving, RHS Senior Community Outreach Advisor
This event is part of a programme of Community Gardening Meet-Ups that the RHS is organising across the UK to support community gardeners, bring them together to share skills and knowledge and make new connections.
Find out more about their Community Outreach work: https://www.rhs.org.uk/get.../community-gardening/projects