On Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 April, the community gardens of Norwich are welcoming visitors to their spaces, with over thirty gardens all over the city taking part.
Community gardens are shared spaces not under private ownership, where people can come and strengthen their connection with the land and each other. As well as offering residents an opportunity to access fresh and affordable fruit and vegetables, the physical and mental health benefits of gardening are becoming more widely appreciated.
The festival, in its second year, is the brainchild of Alina Sandu. Through volunteering with the community garden Green Hearts and doing odd jobs for other gardens with the organisation Good Gym, Alina came to realise just how many community gardens there are in Norwich. But she also noticed something else: surprisingly few people seemed to be aware of this abundance.
Having previously worked for the Norwich Science Festival, she already understood the impact of such events, and had experience in making them happen. She explains how the idea came to her: “I went to an open gardens festival once and thought ‘this is quite nice, but wouldn’t it be better if it was community green spaces instead of people’s back gardens’.”
She approached Norwich City Council’s Community Enabling Team with the idea, and the team were supportive, putting Alina in touch with further gardens and providing funding for bunting and PR. In 2025, twenty gardens participated, and this year the festival is even bigger.
“Putting these spaces on the map”
While some gardens are putting on special events and baking cakes for visitors, many are simply open and will have people tending to them, eager to meet new faces. Alina says she didn’t want the festival to mean extra work for the teams that look after these gardens; instead, the idea is to showcase the work they are already doing, and to raise awareness that these spaces are there for communities to use.
Lucy Moore Fuller, who is co-organising the event, emphasises the importance of challenging preconceptions about what community gardens are. While there are several larger gardens out in the suburbs of the city, many are located in the city centre, such as the green borders near the walkway on Station Approach near the train station. To highlight these spaces, Lucy has put together a 3km Puzzle Walk that takes in around ten gardens between the station and City Hall – many visitors will have walked past several of these gardens without realising they are there or that it is communities of residents that run them.
The team has also put together several other thematic walks, such as one that joins up Norwich’s three “Gardens of Sanctuary”. For those who like to cycle, Critical Mass Norwich is leading a ride on Saturday that will start in the city centre and head out on Marriotts Way towards the gardens of Mile Cross. On Sunday 26 April at 1.30 pm, there will be a free, hands-on herb propagation workshop at Marlpit Community Garden where people can learn how to grow herbs from cuttings and seeds.
Gardening and leisure for all
Lucy and Alina both point out that community gardens offer particular benefits for those who don’t have their own garden at home. Lucy lives in a flat with no garden of her own, and says that even if people know of a community garden nearby, often “you don’t know if you’re allowed in”.
Gardens are about place, and while some people will go onto the internet or social media to learn about ways to get involved, for others, a short in-person conversation with someone busy digging in a raised bed will have more impact – hence the value of a festival where people know someone will be at the gardens if they just pop round.
With spring here and the days longer again, Kieran, a volunteer at the Green Hearts garden, says he hopes the festival will help communicate to local residents “just how good it feels to get outside for an hour in the evening instead of sitting inside.”
Kathy, who is involved in The Common Plot, points out that many of those who are active in community gardens are older in age, and she hopes that the festival will be an occasion to generate interest amongst younger residents.
Something special
It’s in the nature of these spaces that they emerge in a grass-roots manner. Groups of people decide to start something, and while some of them will endure, other initiatives fizzle out after a while. There is also the seasonality of gardening to bear in mind. This means that putting an exact number on how many community gardens there are in a city like Norwich is tricky. While researching for the inaugural festival last year, Alina arrived at a total of 56, but jokes that that number was likely out of date as soon as she’d concluded the survey. Nevertheless, it’s a remarkably high number for a city of this size. Alina also highlights the work of the Community Enabling Team and the support they offer to those setting up and running community gardens.
At the beginning of April, some community gardens across the UK participated in Community Garden Week, which also promoted awareness of community gardens in local neighbourhoods. But the density of gardens in Norwich, along with the creativity that Lucy and Alina have brought to the ways people can engage with these gardens, makes the Norwich Community Gardens Festival something special.
Put it in your diary!
Various details, including information about the cycle ride and the planned walks, and a map of where the gardens are, are being added to the website as we aproach the event. Do check it regularly, and we look forward to seeing you!
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