Communities Fund has provided £1,225 of match funding
Community Growing for People & Planet
Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom
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Aim
Transform Sheffield into a city of community growing where every neighbourhood has nature rich spaces where people can access food
We can live in a world of abundance if we build a bigger table, not a bigger fence.
Picture a city where every neighbourhood has beautiful natural spaces where they grow food. Where children learn where their meals come from and neighbours come together around a shared harvest. Where fresh delicious produce is available to everyone, regardless of circumstances. Everyone should have access to good food. And we believe that, with your help, they can.
Why this is critical now
Britain is sleepwalking into a food crisis. Climate change is destroying harvests and global conflict is disrupting trade and driving up prices. Expectations are that by this autumn food will be 50% more expensive than 5 years ago. Already 1 in 5 people in the UK struggle to access good food, and this figure is set to rise. We can't fix the world - but we can grow more of our own, closer to home, in a way that's affordable for people and kinder to the planet.
You can make a difference
Over the past 11 years we have shown the power of people coming together for the common good, building a bigger table for all of us. Thousands of people have transformed a small campaign to waste less food into a community organisation that provides a million meals worth of food to the city every year. All built from things we already had: surplus food and a vibrant community sector.
We can do the same for food growing. Our city has an incredible amount of land that can be put to better use. Let’s use some of that land to grow food in every neighbourhood for a healthier city, people and planet:
- Grow it here, eat it here. — Food grown close to home, not flown around the world: fresher, suited to our city and our tastes
- Grow good food. Eat good food. — More fruit and veg, grown across our city
- Bring nature into every neighbourhood. — Beautiful green, growing spaces full of life, close to where everyone lives
- A bigger table for everyone. — Share what you can and no one has to go without.
We’ve made a start getting the Norton Nursery back into use for the community, and we now have a unique opportunity to build the first nature rich food growing site with a local community on land made available by the Methodist Circuit in Sheffield. With your help, this can be the start of a city wide transformation bringing good food and nature to every neighbourhood.
Add your name to our bigger table now!
What’s the plan?
In 2024 we started rebuilding the Norton Nursery as a community plant nursery. This autumn we have the opportunity to add a few acres of land to that, and set up a productive beautiful community farm that can start to show how we set up a compassionate community food system that takes care of people and the planet. To get there, we do need your help. Depending on how much we raise, this is what we can achieve:
Plant the Seeds
This is what we can do if we raise at least £5000 (+ match)
This first milestone is about foundations. We need to get our 2 core sites in shape to support dozens of communities growing food across the city region. If we hit our target before the end of August, we can get our autumn crops planted out before the winter starts to bite. If not we will make a start early next year.
Bringing on more productive space in Norton. This involves better irrigation, fixing electrics and more of the growing tables so that this becomes a space that can produce not hundreds, but thousands of seedlings every month.
Preparing Carver Fields for its first growing season. This means cultivating the first section of the site, establishing growing beds and inviting local people to help shape its future through volunteering and community events. Around one-third of the paddock will be brought into production, creating around 200 square metres of growing space.
Grow Together
If we raise £15,000 (+ match funding) we can expand what we do and start to really have a city wide impact
The second milestone is about scale. We want to scale the impact of the Norton Nursery by doubling the number of schools that we support to grow food. We also want to scale the impact of the Carver Fields by expanding the growing area to be ready for an estimated 7.5 tonnes of produce per year that will feed the local community as well as bring fresh healthy produce into our kitchens for the whole city to enjoy in our cafes or our ready meals:
- Add 25 new schools to grow food with a free setup and year of support from us.
- Add productive beds to the Carver Fields to produce food for 1,500 extra healthy community meals
- Build a publicly accessible community food forest with fruit trees, hedgerows and create wildlife habitats.
- Make the Norton and Carver sites suitable to host school visits and public access
Build a Bigger Table
If we raise at least £25,000 (+ match funding) we can really start to build a bigger table for everyone
The third milestone is all about expanding community food growing across the city. We will work with local communities to set up a further 4 community plots across the city and provide plants and skills to those communities to make the most of those spaces.
- Add 4 new public community gardens to our community growing network
- Run regular workshops on the Norton and Carver Fields sites to share skills and knowledge with individuals and communities wanting to grow more of their own food
How you can help
There are 3 ways in which you can help make this happen:
- Donate. We are partnering with Aviva to match any and every donation up to £250, so this is by far the best way to support us as your money will go twice as far!
- In kind giving: there is loads of practical help we need, have a look at our list below to see if you can help
- Spread the word: this is our chance to build a better Sheffield. Share this with your friends, family and colleagues and encourage them to also help build a bigger table for Sheffield
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 21st September 2026 at 12:22pm