Thamesmead Social Gardens: Leading With Participation In Community Gardening

This Learning & Impact Handbook documents the approach, findings and lessons from Thamesmead Social Gardens, a two-year public programme and research project exploring how to sustain interactions with the outdoors through community gardening. The project was focussed on 2 sites in the London boroughs of Greenwich & Bexley and was fully co-produced with people local to these areas.

The handbook lays out the project’s participatory approach in full, including how evaluation was embedded throughout its lifecycle and how sustained dialogue with residents informed decision-making. It explains how this process enabled real-time programming adjustments that were informed by an ever-improving understanding of local people's priorities for the gardens.

An overview of key programming decisions is included, alongside reflections on how they worked in practice. The handbook also discusses the project's informal approach to garden use, which created opportunities to test a wide range of activities and ways of participating. Supporting metrics demonstrate that leading with participation contributed to a substantial increase in sustained engagement with both gardens.

Alongside programme delivery, a community-centred research project explored how residents engaged with the gardens and their wider relationships with nature and outdoor spaces. Through thematically organised insights, the handbook examines motivations for participation that include the significance of growing and garden produce, social connection, wellbeing, mental health, and community cohesion.

It also explores barriers to participation and how these changed over time. Particular attention is given to the importance of consistency and trust including the role co-production can play in building both. This links closely to discussion around governance and stewardship. The handbook further reflects on the challenges of operating and engaging with open-access communal spaces in the public realm, highlighting practical solutions developed during the project.

Insights produced with communities were integral to developing a set of practical recommendations for Peabody intended to inform the medium-term future of each garden and other sites across their portfolio. These are included in full at the end of the handbook and focus on how to sustain engagement levels comparable to those achieved through the programme.

Most insights are presented directly in quote form so that communities' experiences can be heard through their own voices and understood from their own unique perspectives. Portraits taken with and by our participants are threaded throughout the handbook and form an important visual record of our time spent collaborating.