Pilot projects
Throughout 2023-2024 we have been running a pilot to test out some of the ideas and methods we’d like to use as part of the clinic. This was funded by the Landscape Research Group, London National Park City and Necessity.
In May 2023 we put out a call to gardens and growing spaces around London to join the pilot study. We asked the following questions:
1) What is your need for this service/how could it support your activities?
2) In what ways has your group acted in alignment with our values? (Please demonstrate with policies, examples, etc.)
3) What area(s) of the site would you like to test? How are they currently being used?
4) How do you hope you use these areas in the future?
5) What is your lease arrangement/tenure? And who owns this land?
6) How do you organise as a group (here you can tell us about your governance structure, group systems, decision making processes, or how you work together)?
7) How many people are part of your group?
2) In what ways has your group acted in alignment with our values? (Please demonstrate with policies, examples, etc.)
3) What area(s) of the site would you like to test? How are they currently being used?
4) How do you hope you use these areas in the future?
5) What is your lease arrangement/tenure? And who owns this land?
6) How do you organise as a group (here you can tell us about your governance structure, group systems, decision making processes, or how you work together)?
7) How many people are part of your group?
We selected 5 gardens in different parts of the city where we have been testing soil and holding learning circles.
Each pilot site has its own challenges and questions about soil pollution and soil health, giving us a chance to adapt our methods and tools to different contexts. You can read about our wider learning in the Learning Journal section of this archive.
Below is a introduction and overview of each Pilot Site
Abbey Gardens
“We are a community garden in Newham, with an open-access park and harvest garden situated on the site of a 17th Century Abbey, open every day from dawn till dusk. We use the garden as a place to pause, to grow, to meet and to make”.
Abbey Gardens applied to be one of the Soil Clinic’s pilot sites in May 2023, sharing their concerns about arsenic pollution persisting from a history of tanning industries on their site. They also wanted to understand their soil’s health and biodiversity better, and to know if there were other pollutants present that they should be aware of.
Pilot Date: 13th August 2023
Pilot Report: click here
Calthorpe Community Garden
“Calthorpe Community Garden is an inner city community garden and centre. It exists to improve the physical and emotional wellbeing of those who live, work or study in Camden and surrounding areas. Supporting children, the elderly and vulnerable groups in the community, we offer a range of participatory and supervised creative, wellbeing, horticultural and sporting activities for people to meet and take care of each other and the environment. Our two major focuses are 1) promoting sustainability and care for the environment, and 2) improving the physical and mental wellbeing of our local community. We also offer a grounding space, a place where uprooted people can find roots in London and create community around them while reproducing their customs and food culture.”
Our Pilot project at Calthorpe asked questions about how pollution from the nearby road may be affecting soil health in their Sunken Garden area. The team also wanted to test an area further back in the garden where lead contamination had previously been detected.
Pilot Date: 20th September 2023
Pilot report: click here
Coco Collective - Ital Community Gardens
“Ital Community Gardens are Afro diaspora led with a focus on regenerative permaculture methods to grow culturally diverse foods and healing herbs. We use no chemicals, nor animal by- products, nor peat. Our Catford site is youth led by the under 30's. Pan Afrikan and Ital are values that flow through our gardens from soil to plate and governance to events.”
The aim of our first workshop at Coco Collective, was to gather some baseline measures of soil health around the site, so that the impacts of any future interventions could be more easily tracked.
Pilot Date: 17th March 2024
Pilot Report: click here
Angel Gardens
“ACG is situated on an ex-industrial site to the side of the North Circular road and in the shadow of the Edmonton Incinerator, known for its transgressions on air quality (in 2021/22, Edmonton incinerator, run by the North London Waste Authority, breached legal emissions 31 times). Whilst the vegetables and produce we grow are in raised beds, we're concerned to know about the potential pollution impact on our soil and community health. We are composting organic waste and hope to produce our own healthy compost for use and to mitigate soil damage - understanding the quality of this will help too.”
We originally met and connected with Angel’s community gardeners, who shared their interests and concerns, asking:
- What is the soil saying? Where did it come from? What stories does it hold? If the soil could speak, what stories would it tell?
- How does air pollution from the nearby incinerator and North Circular impact soil health & chemistry?
- What is the nutrient content of the soil in our growing beds after many years of growing in them?
Pilot Date: 12th & 29th May 2024
Pilot Report: click here
Chingford Hall Community Garden
Chingford Hall community garden has gone through cycles of use over many years. There are currently a couple of residents who tend to raised beds at the garden. Most of the activity comes from a group of young people ages 6-14 who visit the garden every Friday after school and in the holidays. The aim of the project is to build a young people-centred garden for learning and connecting to the land. We grow some food, do carpentry, and get to know the other life in the garden through lots of different activities (they especially love worms and snails). We are currently doing some sound workshops to explore different ways of connecting with the garden.
We have not yet been able to organise this pilot