The Orchard Project’s Award in Forest Gardening course led one student to create an abundant edible garden for a local food bank.
All our students get to design their own forest garden as part of the course – this can be in their own garden, or a community area. Niru was volunteering for Sufra (a food bank and advice centre in NW London) at the time, so she asked if she could use their small garden area in front of the food bank as a real-life case study.
Garden Manager, Billie Beckley, really liked Niru’s plans for the space, and got Sufra to approve a budget for plants and materials to implement the design.
For Niru (above), the course gave her confidence to know what she was talking about when it came to designing an edible garden. “How do you look after any sort of edible plants unless you know how to feed them organically?” she says. “You need to know how to look after the soil, because that’s where it all starts.
“I’m now able to go somewhere and say, ‘I know what this space needs’ – that’s the sort of depth of knowledge and confidence that The Orchard Project gave me.
“It made me realise I could design a space that people wanted, and one that Sufra was really happy to implement, so it’s a win-win. I really wanted a community space to design, and would definitely recommend it. It’s ok designing your own garden, but if it’s one that other people can use, you get so much more joy out of it.”
The design space is fairly small – approximately 7×14 metres – right next to the office where people queue up to receive food parcels. Niru’s brief was to create a calming, welcoming space which made waiting there a positive experience. “Before I did this garden, they used to queue up down the road,” she explains. “It wasn’t very dignified. Now they can wait here, and they’re surrounded by plants.”
She started with an apple tree, and based the rest of her design around mainly edibles, such as herbs and berries, alongside flowers and fragrant plants.
Sufra staff and volunteers have helped co-design the space, and some of the budget has been used to add a shrub border next to the railing between the garden and pavement. The nitrogen fixing plant Ceanothus cultivar ‘Skylark’ was added with Lungwort, Lavender, Spiraea japonica and Choisya ternata to create a border that is good for the soil and pollinators, which was a requirement for the design.
There are plans to add Autumn olive trees and hazelnuts to provide edible attractive screening for the bins, two climbing kiwis, a dwarf fig tree, and herbs such as Sweet Cicely and Sweet Woodruff, alongside medicinal and pollinator friendly plants like Echinacea.
Before and after shots of the food bank garden
This raised bed garden, including planters and a trellis donated by local firm Murphy’s, is still a work in progress, but Niru already feels they’ve already managed to fit in a lot in the space.
Taking into account the local community’s needs, Niru’s planted three tropical bottle gourd plants which are looking very healthy, and there are plans to add a seating area as the space evolves.
Just a few years ago, Niru was working as a pharmacy technician, but taking a permaculture course led her to consider a different career path. As well as studying for our Award in Forest Gardening, she also completed our Certificate in Community Orcharding Course (CICO) which is also based around permaculture principles. “It was the best thing I ever did,” she said. “All of the courses I have done have given me more confidence – you never stop learning.
“I was drawn to the need to work with nature and not look to eliminate a certain pest or plant, but just get everything to work together,” she explains. ‘I really like that approach – it’s much easier than the traditional approach to gardening.
“I’ve never been an impulsive sort of person, but after studying permaculture with Permablitz London, I became one! I decided to just go for it, leave everything, and I’ve not looked back.”
Now she works as a freelance organic gardener and fruit tree pruner, as well as volunteering at Sufra and Northwick Park community garden, which looks after station beds at Preston Road and other stations on the Metropolitan line. She also runs organic growing workshops for Capital Growth and London National Park City. “If it wasn’t for The Orchard Project, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to go and apply to run the workshops,” she says.