The Calthorpe Project
Environmental Education
The Calthorpe Project is an open space where people can socialise, experience the different natural seasons and learn about the environment.
As a garden in a highly urbanised environment we are an invaluable resource for the community.
We provide growing space for different groups, which is great for the physical and mental health. We also provide a community compost area where, with our waste and some contributions from the community, we create our own compost.
Once a week we provide gardening sessions for the children under the age of four and their parents or carers and at least once a month we bring the families to visit other parks and farms on the city, by doing so we try to bring new experiences to the families and motivate them to use and enjoy the outdoor space.
We provide many cooking sessions for the community using the products that we grow, by using vegetables from the garden we teach people about seasonal products. At the same time we pass them some cooking skills and knowledge about healthy eating.
We run a weekly After School Club for girls only where between other activities we grow vegetables and cook them using healthy recipes.
In partnership with the Mary Ward Centre, for the third year running, we offered Herbalism courses where the participants learn about herbs and their
One of our more committed groups is the Bangladeshi women gardening club. We provide growing space for an increasing number of over 50’s local Bangladeshi women. They come daily to tender their plots and they have become experts at growing natives Bangladeshi vegetables. The women have become more involve in the garden life and had achieved the confident to attend other activities offer by the Project.
A long side with our work in our own garden we offer weekly support to other Camden projects such as our weekly gardening sessions for the Age Concern and Argyle School Primary School.
We represent our Project in many festivals and events in Camden, such as the Camden Green Fair.
For the forth year on a row we organise our October Apple day, were we raise awareness of the seasonal, local and quality aspects of food. We went Apple picking to a local orchard and with the collected fruit we cook apple cakes, apple jam, apple curry and apple juice. We did many games and competitions using apples. The participants enjoy themselves and had the chance to try more that 10 varieties of apples.
Overall and despite the weather and the snails we can say we enjoy sharing our time and our garden with all our users and we hope we can keep providing our community with a diverse range of activities.
