With the purpose of building community resilience and integration, the Mother Gardens project has developed a scheme this year to work with refugee and migrant groups who grow food, and connect them with local land-based community projects around the city.
Kushinga Garden is a key participating project in this scheme. Our volunteers will take part in workdays, sharing their skills and plants, with them also learning new skills themselves and connecting with local people. The idea is to create mutual benefits for both host projects and visiting projects. Kushinga Garden will also be host through various event at the garden, such as plant swap days, workshops, and social gatherings.
Over the last few weeks our members have taken part in workdays to maintain orchards and forest gardens in Stirchley and Bearwood, carrying out fruit tree pruning and other maintenance work.
The Mother Gardens project was developed three years ago by Spring to Life CIC with the aim to create a network of projects and groups who share plants and resources. It emerged out of Food Forest Brum to help create more edible public spaces. Kushinga Community Garden was the first official Mother garden, and has shared a large amount of plants, including resilient edible crops such as African kale (Kovo) to people and groups all over the Birmingham.