A community garden project in Helston is not only providing a communal space for residents to plant and harvest their own food, but also helping people to learn new skills to help take them further in life.
The Incredible Edible Helston project at Coronation Park was started by the Helston Climate Action Group as a way of providing the community with a space in which they could grow their own food, promote biodiversity and reduce carbon emissions.
However, after being pretty much finished off today (Friday 23) with the partnership of InsideOut and Rebuild South West, it has become much more than a place for people to grow their own food.
Melissa Benyon, one of the organisers of Incredible Edible Helston and Green Party candidate for the upcoming local elections, said: "One of the main things about this was people learning new skills.
"So people have come here, they've learnt to use different tools, how to make dry stone walls, they're learning about growing stuff, they're learning to work as part of a team, getting more confident about being outdoors.
"There's just so many benefits to this sort of project and it's all those things put together that make it so special.
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"We're looking to extend it as much as we can, we imagine that you could have an edible trail, so you start off at Coronation Park at work your way around with a little map and find all these different places then go home and have some tea, take some stuff and go and do something with it."
Craig Little, director of Rebuild South West, said: "We've just started a project which is called InsideOut and we've been working job centres and the National Lottery for about ten years now, and we use any empty building or redundant commercial building that could be homes, and we bring it back into use.
"We use the project to train people as we do it so that they've got real-time learning as opposed to mainstream colleges which a lot of the people we get struggle with.
"So every so often we do a community project and in this case we're helping the Incredible Edible guys who are bring back into use this bit of waste land with the intention of planting things that people can help themselves to.
"What we've done is a double-whammy really as we're trying to use it as an engagement thing and helping people to do something that's going to help get them back out move them on back into work or back into wherever they want to be really.
"We're finding a lot of people are struggling to terms with opening the front door to be frank, they've already got anxieties and mental health and other things going on
"We've got six people who have volunteered to come and help, they're all struggling with various different things and they've massively moved on just in the last five days."
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Jen, who was one of the volunteers as part of the InsideOut programme and helped build the community garden, said: "It's a result, it's a real result.
"I'd know about Rebuild South West previously, and they for me were an absolute turning point.
"We've all got histories and we've all got pasts and Rebuild South West were my turning point.
"I came to them via a different channel initially and when I heard that the InsideOut project was launching I was instantly up for that.
"I've struggled like everyone else has throughout the pandemic, isolation in particular was something that was a chore, and more.
"And so having the opportunity to get out in the open and come together with others was such a seamless way of doing things.
"I appreciate being part of something that's meaningful.
"This project is just beautiful, what's been made, there's a lot of consideration into what's been made.
"It's not just about being out in the open, it's also being open with others."
"Come along, even if you have concerns of arnxieties, just to see what's happening."
Chris Bird, one of the mentors of the InsideOut project said: "It's a win-win situation, we're able to help other community projects to develop and expand while at the same time help people to train in new skills and get out of the house and have some social time, it's awesome."
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