Connecting People To The Land
Growing Local is a community interest company that encourages and educates communities to grow and eat local food.
Growing Local was established in June 2009 and is based in Hereford City and until May 2021 at Court Farm, Tillington.
Herefordshire is an agricultural county. Herefordshire farmers grow a huge variety of agricultural products. The county is renowned for its cattle, hops, orchards and soft fruit. Many local farmers are using what they grow to create high quality food products.
We want to connect our local community to its local food. We do this by engaging local fruit and vegetable growers in a vegetable bag scheme, delivering their wonderfully fresh produce in and around Hereford.
We work with many local schools and community organisations to raise awareness of local, seasonal food, and improve health in the community by encouraging ‘cooking from scratch’ and ‘grow your own’. We do this by providing land-based activities at the sites where our fruit and vegetables are produced and at a variety of other local farms.
We have developed an exciting GROW-COOK-EAT programme of activities, ranging from keeping hens, to African gardening to harvesting and cookery in our new ‘field kitchen’.
A little bit about who we are:
Pat Gordon and Heather Percy- Founding members of Growing local
Their love of good food and passion for education inspired the creation of ‘Growing Local’. Pat says ’Our mission is to make it possible for everyone to take control of their food either by buying locally through our vegetable bag scheme or growing their own via our education projects. By buying locally we are supporting local growers so that we know where our food comes from and by cooking from scratch we know what we are eating – we are in control.’
Pat and Heather bring 25 and 20 years, respectively, of teaching experience to Growing Local.
Louisa Foti is our Educational Officer. Louisa brings years of experience as a ‘grow your own ‘ enthusiast and food blogger. Louisa is an ardent foodie, kids cook teacher and street food stall owner. Louisa has developed the ‘Eat’ part of the ‘Grow-Cook-Eat’ programme and built the ‘Field Kitchen’ since joining us. More about Louisa can be found at eatyourveg.co.uk.
Rachel Moffitt, Growing Local’s Administrative Officer, is a dedicated foodie and bringing her exemplary organisational and accounting skills to the company. Rachel helped a similar organisation flourish in Exeter before moving to Hereford.
Denise Pegrum – teaching assistant extraordinaire, always cool, calm and collected. Denise brings a wealth of experience from similar educational projects she worked with during her twenty years spent in the United States.
We also work with our brilliant team of volunteers on all projects. Our volunteers assist with schools workshops, cook workshops, gardening, kit packing, publicity, open days and events etc. Please do get in touch if you would like to help us, louisa@growinglocal.org.uk.