‘It’s never been more urgent’: Inside the garden project empowering communities to grow their own food

With the rising use of food banks, there has never been a more urgent time for people to learn to grow and cook food, says a philanthropist behind a volunteer garden.

George Cornelius is an 86-year-old volunteer working on a garden in Loddington. It’s four-miles long and serves as a wetland area for local wildlife, as well as growing food and pollinator-friendly plants, and getting children at Loddington CE Primary School involved with gardening.

The garden is part of the Coronation Gardens for Food and Nature project, inspired by King Charles’ love of gardening, which is celebrating its second anniversary. The Coronation Gardens project has seen more than 3,500 gardens crop up in communities across the UK, in spaces such as car parks, window boxes and allotments.

Gardens like the one in Loddington not only protect the environment and create much-needed green spaces, but they also enable communities to grow their own food – increasingly crucial at a time when food banks are witnessing the “highest demand ever seen”, says Cornelius.

“Arguably, at a time of chronic food inflation, the need for more people to learn to grow – and then to cook – their own vegetables has never been more urgent,” he said.

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He added that the garden’s pollinator-friendly trees, which the children from the primary school helped to plant, can not only help to protect the country’s insects, but can also be part of producing local food.

“My wife is a beekeeper, and we have a friendship with the driving force behind one of the UK’s largest honey producers,” Cornelius explained. “Cultivating pollinator-friendly fruit trees, flowers and herbs can only promote better honey yields, especially as our climate warms.”

He added that there should be a “much greater focus” on creating green spaces and gardens like allotments to help communities to grow their own food, “as close to urban areas as possible” to give those without access to private gardens the chance to get growing.

The children at Loddington CE Primary School echoed his sentiments, with student Eva saying she is “proud of planting trees so animals can live in them and use them for food”.

As well as the garden at Loddington, the 3,500 gardens that form the Coronation Gardens project include a canal-side community garden in Nottinghamshire, which serves those who live in houseboats, a planter behind a multistorey carpark in Dover, and an edible hedge in a church in Crewe.

Tom Burke, chair of the Coronation Gardens for Food and Nature steering group, explained that the variety of gardens the project has seen highlights the “enormous inventiveness and creativity of people”.

“People have joined in, in all kinds of different ways, with their own garden, or in doing things in schools or doing things in prisons,” he said. “There are all sorts of different places where people have little plots of land, and so there’s been an enormous positive response to the idea that we should do this from people all over the country.”

Burke added that the project aimed to enable people to use “spare bits of land” that they may not otherwise know how to use, adding that DIY culture and producing food for yourself is a “pretty British cultural reflex”.

With a high waiting list for allotments across the UK, and rising food inflation forcing families to miss out on the essentials, Burke explained, “getting people to do things in communities” is vitally important.

“People may think inflation is around 4%, but actually, food price inflation is higher. It’s a larger part of that national average, so you tend to miss it. Well, food is much more directly in people’s experience, day by day,” he said, explaining the need for communities to become more “self-reliant”.

Right to Grow could ‘support community food growing efforts across the country’

As well as encouraging communities to grow their own gardens and produce their own food, the Coronation Gardens project is also calling on local councils to implement a “Right to Grow” policy, which would enable people to grow their own food in disused areas within their towns or boroughs.

A report in May this year from the Coronation Gardens found that community food-growing can bring “significant benefits”, claiming that “although the food production may be modest, projects can help boost nature… build skills, improve health, create circular economies, foster community connections and support food sovereignty.”

In light of the report, the project is now encouraging councils to implement Right to Grow, as well as calling on DEFRA (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs) to integrate community food growing into the development of the National Food Strategy to “ensure people are connected to the sustainable diets they eat”.

Earlier in 2025, Hull City Council became the first council in England to adopt the Right to Grow policy, which allows the community to grow food on unused council land; the policy means the council will produce a map of suitable land it owns, and help those who want to grow food on it overcome bureaucratic issues that may stand in the way of them using it.

Gill Kennett, a local councillor who backed the motion when it was first put forward in 2023, told the Guardian that Hull is a “deprived city and we do need cheap food”, with the proposal set to benefit the city “in many ways”.

Nikki Williams, director of campaigning and communities at The Wildlife Trusts, which runs the Coronation Gardens project alongside Incredible Edible, Garden Organic and the Women’s Institutes, explained that rolling out Right to Grow further could “support community food growing efforts across the country”.

“With more and more of us becoming disconnected from the food we eat and nature that surrounds us, this report proves that we need to see more local councils following Hull’s lead and adopting the Right to Grow if we are to all reap the rewards,” Williams explained.

Big Issue’s Big Grow 

The Coronation Gardens’ anniversary comes after the Big Issue launched its “Big Grow” urban gardening campaign in Norwich, which brings together church members, the homeless community and local volunteers in order to grow, harvest and eat their own sustainable food.

The Big Grow project, made possible thanks to a grant from Norwich City Council, is based at St George Church in Colgate, Norwich, where planters have been dedicated to growing food.

“With rising food prices and limited access to nutritional fruits and vegetables, many in our community face both physical and mental health challenges,” Parveen Bird, director at Big Issue and trustee of the Food Foundation, said.

“Big Grow addresses this by bringing together experienced gardeners with those eager to learn, creating a supportive environment where food becomes a tool for positive change.”

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