Roots in the City Community Garden

“A beautiful space to get to know ourselves, people & nature, learn, grow, notice and connect.”

Grow your Roots….join us in the garden

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We're really excited to be able to welcome people into our lovely community garden once more.

We are currently offering five small group sessions per week and have places available for each:

  • Tuesday 10.00am-midday - Nature4Health

  • Thursday 10.00am-midday City & Guilds Horticulture Level 2 (in partnership with Myerscough College)

  • Thursday 1.00pm-3.00pm City & Guilds Horticulture Level 1 (in partnership with Myerscough College)

  • Thursday 4.30pm-6.30pm Young people's garden group (in partnership with Linda McCartney Foods)

  • Friday 10.00am-midday City & Guilds Horticulture Level 1 (in partnership with Myerscough College)

Our Nature4Health group offers a gentle introduction to the garden. Enjoy time out to reflect, learn to grow, & plant trees and lots more. Enjoy the natural rhythm of the garden through the seasons. No previous experience needed.

In partnership with Myerscough College, we’re offering City & Guilds Horticulture Level 1 and Level 2. Emma, our Myerscough Tutor, will offer a weekly skills based session to complete the Horticulture courses one unit at a time. No previous experience needed for Level 1.

Booking is essential. For more information and to book email rachel@faiths4change.org.uk or phone 0151 705 2162.

Our sessions are fully funded and therefore free to people attending. Thanks to St Michael in the City, Faiths4Change, Nature4Health (Mersey Forest) and Myerscough College for making this possible.

More about Roots in the City

Roots in the City is a dynamic partnership between St Michael in the City & the Faiths4Change, together we’re creating a community connected eco-hub in central Liverpool.

The once overgrown and inaccessible land around the church is now a thriving community garden where people and nature flourish as one. Pre-lockdown the garden offered a beautiful space to share lunch, make friends, learn, grow, dig and connect. The many people who once attended agreed to our Coordinator & Volunteer turning more of the garden over to grow delicious organic veg & herbs for the food bank at St Brides hosted by Micah Liverpool.

So far we’ve grown & distributed almost 100kg of veg & herbs from chard and rhubarb, to basil and thyme to folk attending the foodbank, it’s harvested in the morning & distributed in the afternoon. Seasonal, fresh, tasty, highly nutritious & quality food!

But Roots is so much more than growing food to eat…people attending talk of “organic therapy”, “relief from anxiety” and “a little haven in the city centre to listen to the birds & smell the flowers”. The small congregation are delighted and have enjoyed welcoming other congregations to celebrate in the garden, harvest 2019 saw over 50 people of all ages attend, share breakfast & give thanks together.

Until lock down due to the pandemic, Faiths4Change Coordinator Rosie welcomed people to the garden all day on Thursdays.

Since March 2020 we've grown and gifted over 100 KG of fresh veg and herbs to the Micah foodbank at St Bride's Church, Liverpool.

Special thanks for the last 6 months to (amongst others)

  • Miranda & the Church congregation for believing in us and enabling us to quietly keep the garden blooming & food growing;

  • Caps our long standing volunteer and Rosie our former Coordinator – without your weekly commitment we’d be pulling the brambles from our hair;

  • Emma & Myerscough College for the huge amount of time spent working with us in the garden;

  • The priests at St Vincent’s for continuing to top up our compost heap;

  • George & Martin, the Micah drivers who pick up the weekly harvest (and Ellen who did an emergency pick up) and share it with people attending the Micah Foodbank at St Brides;

Our former curate Gill Reeve volunteered with Faiths4Change as part of her William Temple scholar studies. Gill has written a wonderful blog post about the community growing at St Michael In The City that you can find here: Do not despise the day of small things.

Check out www.faiths4change.org.uk & find Faiths4Change on Twitter @faiths4change, Facebook Faiths4Change and Instagram @faiths.4.change

Roots In The City: The first year

April 2019: Initial Clearance The first stage of clearance: cutting down invasive weeds including brambles and bamboo to ground level and removing rubbish that was buried inside. Filling many skips!

April 2019: Initial Clearance
The first stage of clearance: cutting down invasive weeds including brambles and bamboo to ground level and removing rubbish that was buried inside. Filling many skips!

May 2019: Rotavating Volunteer Caps and Faiths4Change trustee Phil spent days rotavating the soil to get rid of any left over roots – followed by a huge litter picking effort from our community group. We uncovered a sandstone rockery and a huge sect

May 2019: Rotavating
Volunteer Caps and Faiths4Change trustee Phil spent days rotavating the soil to get rid of any left over roots – followed by a huge litter picking effort from our community group. We uncovered a sandstone rockery and a huge section of invasive bamboo on the far side of the garden.

June 2019: Food Growing Area We ran several community consultations and worked with a permaculture designer to create a plan for the garden. The community asked for a food growing area, reflective garden, lots of flowers and fruit trees. Caps and Ph

June 2019: Food Growing Area
We ran several community consultations and worked with a permaculture designer to create a plan for the garden. The community asked for a food growing area, reflective garden, lots of flowers and fruit trees. Caps and Phil covered the ground with weed control fabric and ISG built four raised beds in the food growing section of the garden. The beds were filled by our volunteers with eight tonnes of topsoil and a layer of compost. We planted out tomatoes, sunflowers and pumpkins.

July-October 2019: Group Sessions Our weekly gardening group started in July as well as a weekly Myerscough Level 1 Horticulture course. The regular group helped in getting the garden ready for our community garden launch party for over 100 people.

July-October 2019: Group Sessions
Our weekly gardening group started in July as well as a weekly Myerscough Level 1 Horticulture course. The regular group helped in getting the garden ready for our community garden launch party for over 100 people.

November 2019-February 2020: The Other Parts of the Garden Our weekly group began clearing the other side of the garden of invasive bamboo. We planted over 100 trees as a native hedgerow. Many more skips were filled!

November 2019-February 2020: The Other Parts of the Garden
Our weekly group began clearing the other side of the garden of invasive bamboo. We planted over 100 trees as a native hedgerow. Many more skips were filled!

March 2020: New Focus The Coronavirus social distancing measures came into action meaning many of our group were unable to come. We continued clearing with a small group of regular volunteers until the lockdown started at the end of the month. Fait

March 2020: New Focus
The Coronavirus social distancing measures came into action meaning many of our group were unable to come. We continued clearing with a small group of regular volunteers until the lockdown started at the end of the month. Faiths4Change's Food and Wellbeing Coordinator continued working in the garden alone for several weeks, planting seeds weeding beds and working out how to utilise the space to benefit the local community during this time.

April 2020: Redesigning Volunteer Caps returned to help out and we began harvesting spring crops and donating them to a local food bank. Using the funding and resources available we adapted the garden to enable us to grow as much produce as possible

April 2020: Redesigning
Volunteer Caps returned to help out and we began harvesting spring crops and donating them to a local food bank. Using the funding and resources available we adapted the garden to enable us to grow as much produce as possible to meet the needs of the community. We built three new beds and created seven new food growing areas in total. Our focus switched to growing food staples for the local community. As ever, we continued to promote biodiversity in our garden by dedicating large sections of the garden to wildflowers and creating habitats for wildlife to thrive by leaving large sections uncultivated e.g. a plantain lawn.

April 2020 Continued: Staying Connected As well as serving the wider community with fresh produce we maintained contact with our regular garden group via a fortnightly newsletter with updates from the garden, tips for gardening at home as well as sh

April 2020 Continued: Staying Connected
As well as serving the wider community with fresh produce we maintained contact with our regular garden group via a fortnightly newsletter with updates from the garden, tips for gardening at home as well as sharing photos and videos of other group members' home growing projects.

May 2020: The Hunger Gap Since the end of April 2020 we donated a large veg box every week to the local food bank at St Brides. We kept records of all the harvests and in May donated around 10kg of fresh organic produce worth over £100 including sal

May 2020: The Hunger Gap
Since the end of April 2020 we donated a large veg box every week to the local food bank at St Brides. We kept records of all the harvests and in May donated around 10kg of fresh organic produce worth over £100 including salad, spinach, onions, broad beans, radish and a variety of fresh herbs.

June 2020: Abundance Our wildflowers were blooming, creating a bee and butterfly haven. We received lots of generous donations from our garden group and other local charities to support us to continue our work. We received a grant to give out 20 hom

June 2020: Abundance
Our wildflowers were blooming, creating a bee and butterfly haven. We received lots of generous donations from our garden group and other local charities to support us to continue our work. We received a grant to give out 20 home gardening kits to isolated or shielding households across Liverpool City Region which included compost, pots, instructions, seeds and seedlings grown in our garden or the yards of our regular group. The harvests were abundant and included beetroot, spinach, broad beans, chard, salad, onions, radish and fresh herbs bringing the total weight donated to over 30kg, with a value of over £200 of organic produce.