Lend & Tend (garden-sharing for free food!)
Garden sharing schemes bring people together by matching those who have spare garden space with those keen to grow their own fresh food. Lend & Tend is one of the most popular garden sharing platforms, helping hundreds of growers and garden owners connect.
Read more on no-dig gardening and humane slug/snail deterrents. If you live with animal friends, read up on pet-friendly gardens (some recommended flowers and fruit trees are not safe). Also avoid netting to protect food (just leave some for wildlife!)
Thousands of gardens sit unused or overgrown, simply because their owners don’t have the time, energy, or interest to keep up with them. Lend and Tend matches these untended spaces with people ready to make the most of them.
Working together, they bring neglected spaces to life, turning weedy plots into neatly kept, productive gardens.
Allotment waiting lists in many towns can run for years. Garden sharing is a shortcut to starting your own patch without delay. Tenders (gardeners) can get growing almost instantly, using someone’s backyard or unused land.
Any project like this is ‘peaceful politics in action’, as it gives people the opportunity to grow and share local organic food, rather than be dominated by supermarkets (which many people these days hardly have a choice in shopping anywhere else).
This organisation also works with community food groups and social housing providers, to deliver free access to gardens, and also place fresh food into local food banks. Anyone in the world is free to sign up, though it mostly focuses on the UK.
How Does Garden Sharing Work?
Simply put, you just search for a local landowner who has a garden that looks good for you! It may be a piece of land with raised beds, or a seriously overgrown patch of land that you can’t wait to get going on!
You can use land to grow organic food or flowers (always organic, to protect wildlife and the people and pets that live nearby). The yearly membership is very affordable, and you can also participate in local events like community picnics and tool-sharing.
Most ‘tenders’ buy their own organic seeds, and of course the end result is that the harvest is shared with the landowner, who kindly lent you their garden to grow. Decide in advance (from a basket of fresh vegetables to equal share of apples on a tree).
An example lender on the site is someone who can’t manage the large garden alone. It’s in the grounds of a listed building – a former market garden and allotment. It already has mature trees including hazelnut (leave some for the dormice!)
A food desert is the kind of place, where the only shops for local communities are a small grocery shop selling frozen pizza and chips, and not much else. For people without cars or Internet Access, community gardens are a boon for local organic free food.
