Volunteering at the Hackney Herbal Garden

Thank you for your interest in volunteering with us! The garden volunteering sessions provide an opportunity for people to come and spend some time with us in our garden in Hackney Wick.

The garden is located at Trowbridge Gardens, Trowbridge Road, Hackney Wick, London E9 5LA.

As a volunteer you will be helping out with different activities involved in the overall maintenance and development of the gardens. This might be herb growing and harvesting, general plant care, food growing, pruning and composting, weeding and tidying, as well as things like making signage, painting garden furniture and raised beds. The activities we do in a session vary week to week and also seasonally but always cover something to do with herbs. You don’t need any previous knowledge or experience to sign up, just a willingness to listen, learn and take part. The sessions will run outdoors regardless of the weather and will only be cancelled in extreme weather conditions that pose a health and safety threat. Please consider this and only sign up if you are happy to be outdoors in all weather conditions. We aim to make the sessions inclusive and accessible to all so when you sign up you can give us some extra info which helps us to design sessions that are supportive and safe for everyone.

  • Sessions take place on Saturday morning, between 10am - 1pm.

  • The sessions are open to adults (18 years and above)

  • At Trowbridge Gardens there are two garden spaces - the Herb Garden and the Big Garden

  • The Big Garden is open to the public ie. there will be members of the public walking through the garden to access the cafe on site during the sessions

  • There is an indoor toilet on site

  • Both garden spaces and the building (where the toilets are) are wheelchair accessible

If you’d like to hear about future volunteer dates as they become available, please use the form below to register your interest. By doing so, you’ll start receiving our monthly volunteer updates via email, with upcoming volunteer dates and other garden events. If you sign up, but don’t hear from us, please check your spam folder as spam filters are sometimes get it wrong.

You can also follow what we are up to in the garden by following our Instagram page.

If you have any questions please send us an email Camila - camila@hackneyherbal.com

Thank you so much!

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Referral info

We are open to referrals from local organisations, link workers and health coaches so if you are working with someone you would like to refer please send us an email hello@hackneyherbal.com

 

Monthly Volunteer Litter Picking on Mabley Green and Hackney Marshes

Our local green spaces are so important to us and our community here in Hackney and we have been sad to see so much litter being left on them. We run monthly litter picking sessions to help clean up these spaces. The sessions will last approximately 2-hours and will incorporate some nature connection activities. You will also learn about some of the wild herbs growing in these spaces.

We will meet in the car park by the football pitches on Mabley Green and then walk to a different area each time. All materials, equipment and gloves will be provided.

Upcoming sessions are listed below. As we have limited spaces please only sign-up if you are certain you can make the time and date. If you have any questions please contact Amy - amy@hackneyherbal.com After you have signed up for a session you will receive an email reminder a few days before the session with details of the meet-up point.

This year our volunteering activities are being supported by Grow Back Greener Funding kindly provided by Mayor of London. The funding is helping us to put on weekly volunteering sessions at the garden. Though this project we are implementing a forest garden in the Big Garden and continuing to develop the Herb Garden. This will involve implementing a mixed and diverse planting plan featuring edibles, medicinal herbs, natural dye plants, fibre plants as well as plants that support pollinators and other wildlife. There will be a focus on plants that can withstand different climatic scenarios based on recent years of wet winters and dry summers. There will be different zones of planting with an emphasis on creating a polyculture and how this creates resilient ecological systems. In addition to the weekly volunteer sessions there will be a series of design and permaculture workshops. You can register your interest above to keep up to date with activities on offer.

 

Employee volunteering

We offer a package for businesses who want to spend a day helping out with our project activities as part of their corporate social responsibility. These vary seasonally and range from activities like helping to develop new herb growing sites to giving us a hand with harvesting, processing and packaging our speciality tea blends. 

Previous clients include Burberry, Timberland, Barclays and LexisNexis.

For more info please send us an email hello@hackneyherbal.com