10 Years+ and Growing

Growing Together—A Little More Patience, Big Things Are Blooming! 🌱

“A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all, it teaches entire trust.” -Gertrude Jekyll

When I founded Lend and Tend in 2014, it was a simple idea—helping people beat allotment waiting lists by sharing gardens. Fast forward 10+ years, and this mission has grown beyond anything I could have imagined! Featured on BBC One Show, Vogue, Homes & Gardens, and more, our garden-sharing community continues to tackle isolation, food insecurity, and accessing gardening space.

For older folks, it’s a friendly visit from a keen gardener. For those without a garden, it’s a space to grow, connect with nature, and even put food on the table. But most importantly, it’s about people, community, and meaningful sustainability.

To everyone who has been part of this journey—thank you. Your support, enthusiasm, and belief in garden sharing have kept this movement alive.

But I know—there are still thousands of you waiting for a garden-sharing opportunity, and I only matched a handful of people last year. That’s not enough. I want to help ALL of you.

It’s going to take more than just me wearing a sandwich board and banging my drum. I need your help sowing the seeds, spreading the word.

And although I appreciate your patience and your trust in the process, I need you to also tell your neighbours, your shopkeeper, the parents at the school gates, your housemates, your gran! Without spreading the word, gardens will go unshared. So, in the true spirit of sharing—please share this post and encourage more people to garden share. Every conversation, every mention, every share makes a difference.

So, What’s Next? Big Things Are Sprouting! 🌿

As we mark 10+ years, we’re expanding in exciting ways:

✨ Building New Ways to Grow: At Lend and Tend, we’re committed to keeping our services free for everyone to register, and we will always ensure that people on Pension or Universal Credit can access our services at no cost. If you need support, even if you’re not currently receiving benefits, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. However, to ensure the continued growth and sustainability of our mission, our COO, Mark Pearce, and I have been brainstorming innovative ways to fund Lend and Tend—focusing on local food-growing initiatives, supporting community organisations and contributing to wildlife trusts, and biodiversity efforts.

These initiatives are crucial in helping us continue to make a difference while keeping the heart of Lend and Tend accessible to all.

📱 A New App is on the Way! Our brilliant CTO, Lenka Mudrich, is prototyping a new Lend and Tend app set to Beta Test in Spring 2025. Want to be among the first to try it? Let us know!

🍿 Watch the latest interviews on YouTube, try a healthier easy growing project for January that you can do at home with Eledel MG Microgreens and catch the latest video with Sam Spencer from ME13 Market Garden talking about winter patience, rest and resilience.

🌎 More Big Announcements Coming Soon! We’ve got exciting updates in the works, so stay tuned.

We’re getting there, and we’re so grateful you’re on this journey with us. So, let’s keep going. Keep sharing, keep tending, and keep growing—together. 💚

“Gardeners are good at nurturing, and they have a great quality of patience, they're tender. They have to be persistent.” - Ralph Fiennes

Persistent, like a weed. That’s me. Here’s to the next decade of growing, sharing, and tending—together!