The Community Garden Project
Working together to create a flower and vegetable garden to provide for our community and local wildlife.
Inspired by the goals of LiveSimply and responding hopefully to Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’, a community gardening project has been taking shape at St Dunstan's.
A group of keen gardeners is forming to create a Garden Club and Canon Rob has kindly agreed to the development of a community garden outside the Parish house.
All volunteers welcome - experienced and novice, young and not-so-young as well as families.
Do get in contact via the live simply email address if you would like to join. livesimply@st-dunstans.org
When: The objective is to meet maybe twice a week during the growing season, once during the week and once during the weekend. We will be firming up details in the early spring.
Where: The community garden is located behind the church on a patch of grass adjacent to the presbytery so do go and have a look as the small start we have already made.
The aim is to bring together members of our parish community in a project that celebrates the bounty of our Common Home. Of course, the project is by itself a very small act through which we hope that each gardener and each visitor may develop a deepening of understanding of the connection between our actions and the natural world.
In some part also, our project will give our community some solidarity with the vital work being done by the Poor Servants of the Mother of God in Ikutha, Kenya. While our community project in leafy Surrey is of course nothing like subsistence farming in Kenya, we hope that navigating the challenges of growing in our own small way will give us the beginnings of an insight into challenges faced by that community in their micro-agricultral scheme to grow to sustain their livelihood. Unlike us, they face the additional challenges of water scarcity and excessive heat that come with living at the sharp end of the climate crisis.
Also, we hope that our own growing endeavours may provide some practical benefit to the Ikutha project: by raising funds on donations for flowers and produce we are able to grow as well as plants and seeds we can exchange.
While 2025 has seen the establishment of the project and the first flowerbeds dug and planted, Spring 2026 will hopefully see the project take off.
RHS VISIT
THe RHS was invited to come to the garden space and talk to the Garden Club about the plans for creating a workable greenspace for the community to connect, take care of their wellbeing and improve the local biodiversity.
Julie Jowett (Senior Community Outreach Advisor, RHS Wisley) and Claire Davitt (Community Outreach Advisor, RHS Wisley) met with some of the garden Club on site and made suggestions to support the success of the project.
Actions to be considered:
1. The RHS Communities team to email the church with links and contacts to help with ideas.
2. The church to ask its members what they would like to see and learn in their garden spaces.
3. A Garden Club visit to RHS Wisley Gardens for inspiration – to see the World Food Garden and the Greener Skills Garden.
4. The group to communicate effectively with the church community and main gardener.
5. Reach out to other churches/groups who have community gardens for insights and ideas.
Progress report:
3/11/25
4 flower beds have now been prepared for planting
One has been planted with bulbs and another planted with broad bean seeds
Fingers crossed we will start to see shoots after a month or two!