A Different Environment

Stopping gives you time to reflect and ponder, to look back at what we’ve achieved since starting Grow in 2018, from the Pilot Programme, gaining momentum on each programme with increasing numbers of young people coming through our door. We have come a long way and have now impacted quite a few young people’s lives, helping them to grow in confidence and unlock their potential.

I think the more we do what we do, the more I see the importance of basing our operation around horticulture, spending a day a week doing work experience at Holly Hagg Farm, getting the young people to pot and plant a seed during our intro session, demonstrating how simple the principles of growth can be.

Let’s get things straight, I am not a gardener, Steve the Managing Director is the gardener! Before lockdown I’d spent more time gardening with Grow than I have in my own time. My wife is now a pretty keen gardener, mainly in the area of growing vegetables, her roots of growing up on a farm seem to be keen on making things green in the urban estate in which we live. I seem to have developed the role of making and improving the things in the garden that help her and the plants. Making the raised beds, tidying the shed to give her a gardening area to store things and pot things on, edging out the apple tree. Recently I bought her a nice fork and trowel. I was amazed at the quality of what you can get for relatively little money. I’m so used to buying tech items that are always quite painful to press the buy button on. But this was a delight! A spade made in Sheffield for £35? I was excited to click buy, knowing I was buying something that would last for years and was made down the road!

I think that carries over into the whole of horticulture and how it seems to delightfully contrast, and feel like such a relief, from so many aspects of modern life. I loved roughly cutting the wood and making crude batons to edge out the tree. I loved sweeping out the shed and sorting things but it still being a bit ramshackle and that being okay. When you’re gardening it seems like using a level of precision that is anywhere close to what you need for a lot of other things, it is more than good enough. And more than that, when it’s in, it looks great!

I find myself almost paralysed when trying to pot little seedlings on, I’m shocked that you just get some soil, tamp it down a bit, poke a hole, put the delicate little seedling in and fill the hole with the roots in with soil. It’s so refreshingly simple, so hands on, and yet is creating something so complex and mostly self sustaining. I find myself thinking, there must be more to it, I must be doing something wrong. I also love how a few simple tools and materials enable you to create so much.

I just love being outside, in the fresh air, in the elements of cold, warm, rain and gentle breeze. I love getting my hands mucky and knowing that’s how they will be for the hours while I’m outside doing stuff. This isn’t meant to be too serious a reflection but I think it’s good to recognise the benefits of doing this stuff, of getting away from our screens, entertainment and various forms of communication. I see the same delight, the same sense of satisfaction and accomplishment in the young people on Grow. Few other forms of creativity require you jump with all your energy on to a spade to slice through the grass and soil, to sweat while digging and turning soil, and yet the delicate touch of separating roots; all the while your ideas are becoming reality before you as things take shape and grow.

Isn’t it great that being in the right environment with a few simple tools can bring so much transformation? Such simple principles are so objectively true. I think that’s what I’m reflecting on, and that we should do it more! We believe that is what our young people benefit from, we are truly providing this other space for them to discover these things, to see for themselves that their hands can bring transformation. Their confidence is growing. During lockdown I’ve discovered this delight for myself and therefore I believe more than ever in the course that Grow has set. I’m really happy to be part of an organisation that is impacting the lives of so many young people and at it’s core believes in getting out into the world and bringing beauty and hope.

Jon Davies, Operations Assistant