Meet our champions

Plant Co-operative is a not-for-profit urban gardening collective formed in the spring of 2021. They specialise in tending often neglected urban city centre spaces, working alongside city developers, the city council, local organisations and charities to transform and manage pockets of wilder space, and create the opportunity to bring the community together through gardening.

From a community ‘Moon Garden’ in the heart of Manchester’s busy Chinatown, to a three-year project transforming a 20-acre city centre development into a thriving community garden at NOMA, Plant Co-operative has developed a blueprint that challenges the common misconception that community gardening has to be rough and ready and at odds with the developer’s and council’s aesthetics. Instead, it showcases the benefits that can be shared by all by taking a different approach – increasing biodiversity, improving social connection and mental health, and ultimately creating a city of gardeners.

Project Grow is a social enterprise that aims to ‘sell plants with purpose’. All funds raised go back into the vital growing of good food for community projects across Gloucestershire. Project Grow has two community gardens, one in Gloucester and the other in Cheltenham.

In Gloucester, they have teamed up with Wiggly Charity and the Gloucestershire Heritage Hub, taking over the Hub’s existing community garden. The aim is to grow 50% of the vegetables used in Wiggly’s cookery courses as well as for the community of Kingsholm. At their site in Cheltenham’s Community Rest Garden, Project Grow has teamed up with Cheltenham Community Flowers to provide the members of The Fresh Hope Food Pantry with a choice of fresh locally grown vegetables, flowers and herbs.

At both sites, Project Grow is working to prove the case for a more sustainable community food system, growing