Growing our own fruit and vegetables has multiple benefits from improved health and wellbeing to reduced food miles. We decided to set up a ‘Get Caerleon Growing’ group to build a community of people who are interested in growing their own fruit and vegetables. The 'Get Caerleon Growing' facebook group has connected a range of people from complete beginners to experienced growers. The group has led to lots of seeds, produce and knowledge swapping!

We were fortunate to receive a grant of £5000 through the Newport Participatory Budgeting process to run a ‘Get Caerleon Growing Project’. With this funding we have run a ‘Grow your own Christmas Dinner’ project and gave out seeds, compost, pots and nets, basically everything needed to grow broccoli, parsnips, leeks, carrots, swede, sprouts etc.

We will also run a spring growalong in 2023 and hope to inspire more of the community to experiment with growing their own fruit and veg.

We recently delivered a session with the Caerleon Rainbows group. The girls really enjoyed learning about growing various fruit and vegetables and are currently growing winter peas at home.

We would welcome opportunities to work with other community groups so please email greencaerleon@gmail.com if you would like to discuss this.