Find out why Community Gardens are good for us by watching this video.
NHS Midlands and East commissioned Martineau Gardens to report how the community garden is a model for improving public health and resilience in Birmingham, with particular focus on the impact of the garden and gardening on the mental health and well being of the people of Birmingham. The film documents the activities of Martineau Gardens (and other urban growing projects) with evidence from staff, volunteers and visitors who use the Gardens.
What is a Community Garden?
People often ask us, ‘What is a Community Garden?’. We think Social Farms and Gardens explains this rather well:
“City farms and community gardens are community managed projects working with people, animals and plants. They range from tiny wildlife gardens to fruit and vegetable plots on housing estates, from community polytunnels to large city farms. City farms and community gardens are often developed by local people in a voluntary capacity, and commonly retain a strong degree of volunteer involvement.”
What’s the background?
“The origins of community farms and gardens stem back to therapeutic gardens associated with hospitals, school growing areas and early cooperative agricultural systems. Changes in cultures and land-management systems led to ownership of land falling into fewer hands and a move away from outdoor learning and therapy. However, the last half of the 20th century has seen a resurgence in community food growing, partly inspired by the growth of the community garden movement in the United States. Influence from the Netherlands generated interest in community farming and in 1972 the UK’s first city farm was established in Kentish Town, London.”
Social Farms & Gardens was formed by the merger of two charities, the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens and Care Farming UK. Find out more about this excellent organisation here.
Therapeutic Horticulture at Martineau Gardens
Martineau Gardens provides a unique therapeutic horticulture service to people from all over the city.