A new community allotment offering local people the chance to grow their own food has officially launched in Garforth.
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00:00I'm Ed Morrison, founder of Roots. We're at Providence Pastures in Garthorth. We
00:05started Roots two and a half years ago. We were looking for a place to grow in
00:09London after I'd learned how to grow over lockdown and we came across 28-year
00:13waiting lists and we just thought wow that's a long time to wait for an
00:16allotment and then Will and Christian, my partners on this, came up with the
00:21crazy idea to help supply everyone with seeds, plants and just try and get them
00:24growing as as easily as possible. We've got an incredible land partner here,
00:29Jill and Andrew. They've been farming this land organically for decades and
00:33decades and it's just really lovely to partner up with farmers to help them
00:37diversify because it's really hard as a farmer out there. A lot of our connection
00:41is digital nowadays so it's lovely to bring people away from the screens, out
00:44into the open, engaging in nature, growing their own food and forming community.
00:49We've grown everything from potatoes and plenty of courgettes, too many to eat.
00:55Although we've been out of the lockdown for a while I think people were still
00:58trying to grasp a sense of community which I necessarily didn't have when all
01:02that happened. So having this it's nice to just meet people. There's different
01:06events that they put on every weekend. I've done a bit of yoga.
01:09I like watching plants grow and playing.
01:16I like watering the plants and playing with games and stuff.
01:22I've enjoyed de-weeding today because there's loads of grass been growing inside our plot.
01:28When my mum and dad are doing the planting we like running around and playing in the wheelbarrows and stuff.
01:37It's amazing how the plants grow with just some water and sunlight.
01:43We import about 80% of the food. If you include the food that is imported here then remade in the UK,
01:48that's then classified as made in the UK. So the more people we can mobilise to grow,
01:53the better our food security, the stronger our communities will become and
01:57the better Ireland we'll live on.