My Churchill Fellowship will see me travel to Italy, Ireland and Norway to explore green care and care farming in more depth. But for now, and with travel prevented by current Covid 19 restrictions, I content myself with some virtual travel through zoom meetings, courses and emails.
In particular, I wanted to explore care farming in countries outside of Europe and you will know that over the past few weeks I have been speaking to farmers and growers in Australia, Canada and the USA.
In September, I joined a Food for Resilience online workshop which was jointly hosted by green care organisations based in London, New York and Toronto and where we shared our Transatlantic experiences. I send a huge thank you to NYC Parks GreenThumb and Toronto Urban Growers for their warm welcome and taking the time to answer my green care questions relating to North America.
While social and therapeutic horticulture is thriving in Canada, care farming is in its infancy with only a couple of working care farms at present, Fiddlehead and Nourishing Hearts. They operate in a similar way to the European care farming model but crucially, were founded by social workers, and operate in a very child and family-focused manner and follow nature-based therapeutic and counselling approaches.
Social horticulture in Canada is not only found in the countryside, but also in towns and cities. Urban agriculture projects encourage every available space to be turned into community orchards, allotments and growing spaces for the use of the local community. As well as making friends, learning new skills, and investigating new ways of growing such as Hydroponics or Vertical Growing, these gardens and growing spaces lift the spirit as well as feeding those who attend.
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