Core activities are based around environmental crafts, foraging and homesteading practices such as natural soap making, organic food growing and preparing herbal remedies. 

For me, the Grow Garden is a step towards locally empowered communities; where areas of health, environment, sense of community and work opportunity very much overlap, and within which, this interconnectivity (of people, place and planet) is understood, appreciated and celebrated.  It is an interesting time to be alive. 

With more of us here than ever before, we are realising just how redundant and unfitting our ideals and parameters of success and productivity are. The old model of how to be human, simply does not work and is directly reflected in the depleted soils, degraded land, loss of biodiversity and chronic illnesses which encompass the greatest extinction event the planet has ever seen. However, what is most profound and simply astonishing is that Nature’s beauty, patience, and resilience is much greater than our current stupidity and therein, lies the hope and inspiration for the abundant and healthy future we must learn to co-create. 

Working with nature (and recognising ourselves as part of it), and by adopting ecologically sound farming practices, is absolutely key to creating this future. Over 70% of Scotland’s land is agricultural and we must understand and become more involved with these practices as they directly affect our families and the environment. In doing so, we will become more empowered and responsible in working with the land directly under our feet, helping us to better appreciate and regenerate it. This would dramatically reduce much of the current, global problems outlined above, and surely, we must look to our immediate environment before we can think of doing anything else – something the latest virus crisis has led us to do – home growing, community veg box schemes, direct buying from farmers, and connecting with nature and eventually each other, has never been so popular or important. Evidently, the re-organisation of civilization is absolutely necessary and is already underway as more and more grassroots and community cooperatives take local, empowered action. Ultimately, there is a natural order to the whole Cosmos, our dear Planet Earth and everything it embodies. 

We must learn to see ourselves as part of that body, a substance of nature and not separate from the rest of it – nature is our only true security – really, nothing else is more important. Should we continue to deplete, degrade, and poison the soil at our current rate and by simply getting on with our jobs and lives as ‘normal’, our children’s children will not survive. Therefore, in lifting our heads from the murky waters of greed, deception, and distraction to see, admit, and feel collectively responsible for the absolute abhorrence we have created is a difficult but most honourable task. Many of us are at this point and we must use this indignance to drive forward in a much more sincere and positive way, there has never been a more weighty or significant time. 

We must not get overwhelmed by the enormity of our task as the answers and actions are literally on our doorstep - carried out by local communities in those communities themselves. If we all do our part to work with and enhance natural systems in our immediate environment, we will not only survive but thrive. Therefore, by restoring natures balance, getting hands-on to know and understand the land that is our birth right – and of which is an extension of ourselves – we unite as responsible, empowered people in a new way that embodies and celebrates what it really means to be human. … Thank you for your support! 

Still here and enjoyed the read?... check out Lauren’s ‘deep dive’ on food poverty on her blog.