Grow a Row to Support the Cambridge Emergency Food Response

We are looking for local growers to help support our emergency food programme, by planting extra crops and donating surplus fruit, veg and herbs towards one of the eight Community Food Hubs that we are helping coordinate in partnership with Cambridge Food Poverty Alliance throughout the city.

As more people than ever have discovered since the pandemic, growing your own fruit and veg is fantastic; it’s exciting to see your germinating seeds pop up, and look after them until it’s time to harvest the delicious and healthy produce. The benefits for our mental health of gardening and spending time in green spaces are now widely recognised. Whether you are already a gardener, or planning to start this year for the first time, we’d love to hear from you if you would like to “Grow a Row” extra to share with the community.

Over the last few summers we have asked growers to “Grow a Row” and to share – to support others living locally who are struggling to afford fresh and healthy food, and we were delighted by the generous response we received. It was an inspiring community effort with allotments designating plots to provide donations throughout the season, streets setting up community growing schemes to grow and donate fruit and veg to their nearest Community Food Hub, and someone even brought us a 17 kilo pumpkin in a bike trailer! During 2022 “Grow a Row” saw around 2 and a half tonnes of fresh produce grown and donated by individuals, families and small community projects - see for yourself some of the amazing produce in our blog post!

We are asking the community once again to grow and share to help support the Cambridge community. We welcome all donations of fresh fruit, veg and herbs to help keep our services running, and support those struggling to access food. Some people are also sharing their spare plants and seedlings to the food hubs to help spread the joy of growing!

If you could “Grow a Row” extra, get your street involved in growing together, or if you find you have a glut on your hands that you would like to donate, please contact info@cambridgesustainablefood.org and we will get back to you with more information. Make sure to check your spam emails for a response.

You don’t have to be an experienced grower to help out - we welcome growers old and new! So even if you want to try growing some herbs on your windowsill, please get in touch!

If you are new to growing and looking for some tips on how and what to grow, check out our resource page, including links on how to grow with limited space and resources to school growing.