Scrumptious Garden C.I.C.

Imagine if everyone in the UK could buy fruit and veg, freshly picked, from market gardens on our own streets and run by our neighbours. How much better that food would taste than the tired stuff that is all that’s available from supermarkets. How much better for us it would be if, instead of being bred to survive transport over thousands of miles and weeks on the shelf, it was bred for flavour and nutrition. Scrumptious Garden partners with housing associations and other landowners to turn underused urban plots into clusters of productive, financially self-sustaining, market gardens. We are creating training programs teaching business and horticultural skills to local people, enabling them to access the new jobs we are creating. We train local residents with limited economic opportunities in all aspects of growing and entrepreneurship. At each new location, we start by selling very high-value, rapid turn-around microgreens to chefs, creating a customer base for our produce and generating revenue fast. Then we establish a network of small biointensive market gardens selling high-value edible flowers, herbs and salads alongside more conventional vegetables. These are sold both to our existing market and locally, using the revenue from speciality sales to ensure our other produce remains accessible. Finally, we develop land that is unsuitable for biointensive farming into community green spaces filled with attractive, unusual and edible crops that would not otherwise be financially viable. This adds to our range for all our customers, creates space for wildlife, captures carbon, and by making these areas multi-purpose and revenue generating, we ensure they will be maintained as social spaces long-term. We start simple, using the basics of producing and selling microgreens to train our growers in all aspects of running a business, then we support them through the development of their site, enabling them to grow their skills and experience gradually as they scale up production. The whole is a resilient and secure food and jobs system. Our test site is in stunning Loch Tayside, where we are developing our modular, scalable business model in relatively benign growing conditions. We have now set up our first microgreen facility and are ready to launch. We have spent the past Winter preparing the site of our first biointensive market garden and that is also now ready grow. We are developing our first training program in partnership with Easthall Park Housing Co-operative and Glasgow City Council and we will soon be bringing our first trainees to our test site.