The Bristol gardeners working to create system change

A pale blue butterfly flits from patch to patch while gardeners work in the sun beneath the tower blocks overlooking the Speedwell Allotments.

It’s a tranquil spot bursting with vibrant plant life but it serves a serious purpose in the fight to tackle both climate change and food poverty.

This is the main site of Incredible Edible Bristol, an organisation that has been working in the city since 2014 to pioneer new ways of growing and providing sustainable sources of food. It is also Bristol24/7’s environmental charity partner for 2022/23.

From the railway station at Avonmouth to Millennium Square, their work crops up across Bristol, often in the most unlikely of places.

“We founded Edible Bristol in 2014 to work with communities to take pieces of lost and unloved land across the city and turn them into community assets in the form of community gardens,” says founder Sara Venn, reflecting on the origins of the volunteer-led enterprise.

Incredible Edible Bristol volunteer coordinator Luke Murray and volunteer Sue Baker at work on the Speedwell Allotment

Incredible Edible started out creating mini patches of garden in Stokes Croft and Kingsdown, spaces that have since been taken over by the residents of Dove Gardens, and has gone on to work with some 58 different communities in the city.

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Read more: The Kingsdown gardens bringing a community together 

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The Urban Food Trail was launched in 2015 as a series of gardens leading from Temple Meads to Millennium Square, with edible items growing in each. Incredible Edible also created gardens in the Bearpit before it was taken back into the hands of Bristol City Council.

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With the pandemic putting an abrupt stop to much of the organisation’s work in public spaces, Sara and her small team adapted with a renewed focus on education and food justice.

It is on the Speedwell Allotments, inside a roomy wooden shed, that much of this work takes place and it’s from here that Sara speaks passionately about her work and vision for the future of the city.

“We’ve turned our emphasis onto food justice and looking at how we can support the growing side of food justice in the city,” says the trained horticulturalist and gardener.

“That means supporting people coming out of crisis or who might see crisis in their future.

“We know that we have a massive food inaccessibility issue in lots of places, not just around Bristol, but everywhere. Community gardening isn’t just a few people coming together, it’s people actually finding solutions to the problems that they might be having.

“And I think that on a bigger scale, it could actually lead to employment and different ways of using land.”

The Speedwell Allotment site is used for growing and education

The food grown at the allotment goes into the Speedwell Food Club, while food from Avonmouth Station is used by people in the community centre. Incredible Edible has also worked with organisations such as 91 Ways and donated to Aid Box Community.

Sara has been involved in environmental work for many years. “You can’t have climate justice until you’ve got food justice and social justice,” she continues.

“We’ve known for decades that this fuel crisis was on its way and we haven’t done anything about it. And this is a simple way of giving people a solution to climate issues that they can do themselves.”

Sara explains that learning gardening and horticulture skills, especially in an environmentally-friendly way, are out of reach for many due to the costs involved and lack of accessible courses. Incredible Edible Bristol is seeking to change this and has already secured some funding to run some free courses.

Ultimately, the plan is to charge people for some courses to help subsidise places for those who can’t pay.

Lisa Price started growing things on her windowsill during lockdown

Planting out tiny seedlings in a nearby plot is Incredible Edible’s new trainee grower Lisa Price.

She turned to gardening during lockdown, learning to grow what she could on her windowsill, and then enrolled on a course run by Incredible Edible for young people on how to use a small garden space.

“Being out gardening together was some of the only contact with other people we got during lockdown,” Lisa tells Bristol24/7, adding that it boosts her sense of wellbeing.

Back at the shed overlooking the thriving allotment gardens, Sara reflects on the misconceptions about the organisation and her hopes for Bristol.

“It’s not just a lot of lovely people doing gardening,” she says. “It’s a lot of lovely people looking at system change. There is no reason why this stuff can’t happen from the city centre right out to the edges of the city and it’s about providing food. I just think that edible landscaping is something that should be looked at and taken more seriously. Because wouldn’t it be great to have a city where it was normal to pick an apple off a tree and eat it?”

She adds: “I think it would be really interesting to look at how we use public spaces, and by that I don’t just mean parks, but those spaces we walk through on a daily basis where we probably don’t even look at what’s around you.

“Those spaces that we either don’t use or that are underutilised could be used for the public good.”

“Edible landscaping is something that should be looked at and taken more seriously,” says Sara Venn

All photos: Ellie Pipe

Read more: The rise of grassroots growing projects in Bristol 

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