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Green Fingers, Good Health
Green Fingers, Good Health – Blog Post #20
Published on Wednesday 17th January 2025 by Kathryn Muir

Kathryn from the How Are You Cambridgeshire and Peterborough team went to visit CoFarm – a community farm in Cambridge that has been running since 2020. The farm is helping to address the loss of biodiversity in the UK by farming hand-in-hand with nature. It is also helping to make organically grown, locally produced fruit and vegetables available to more people. The farm has produced over 35 tonnes of organically grown fresh fruit and vegetables since 2020, and over 70 percent of this has been donated to food hubs to help people experiencing food insecurity across Cambridge. Volunteers are also able to purchase produce from the farm at a 50% reduction.
Kathryn chatted with Lucy Shepherd, Community Engagement Coordinator at CoFarm, about the benefits of volunteering. She emphasised a wide range of benefits:
“People can come along, learn some skills, make some friends, get out in the fresh air and do a bit of exercise.”
Kathryn asked Lucy about the different motivations people have for volunteering at CoFarm:
“Some people come because they don’t have a garden themselves in Cambridge, and others come because they’d like to learn from the team. We’ve got two excellent horticulturists with amazing knowledge base, so people come to learn from them, and perhaps get tips as to what they can do on their own allotment or garden. Some come along for their mental health and just to have a bit of time out. Then for a lot of other people, they definitely come to build their own personal community. We’ve got a lot of people who’ve just arrived in Cambridge into the UK, and they don’t really know very many other people, so they’re coming to us to meet others. So, I think there are so many different things that people can get out of it.”
Kathryn also spoke to Michael, a regular CoFarm volunteer about the benefits they have experienced from volunteering:
“As an autistic person who has struggled with burnout and depression, CoFarm has become an essential part of my mental health routine this year. It’s fun, it’s educational, it’s great exercise out in the fresh air, and with a lot of the produce ending up at local food hubs it feels like I’m contributing to something positive. It’s helped me form deeper connections with both my local community and the means of food production. By which I mean that it can be easy to feel alienated from a complex world in which nearly everything you depend on happens at a distance. But being able to eat fresh, delicious (and relatively inexpensive) produce you’ve helped grow and harvest with your own hands can help tremendously.”
You can find out more about volunteering at CoFarm by visiting this page on the How Are You Cambridge website: https://haycambridge.co.uk/activities/volunteer-at-cofarm-cambridge/


There’s evidence that regular contact with plants, animals and the natural environment can improve physical health and mental wellbeing, and gardening and growing projects are a great way for people to learn, connect, get outside and be physically active. This academic study entitled ‘The benefits of gardening and food growing for health and wellbeing’ is free to download on this link and reviews the extensive scientific literature that exists, examining the benefits of gardening and community food growing for health.
There are lots of other gardening and growing projects you can get involved with across the rest of the county. In South Cambs, Cottenham Community Allotment grows and shares produce and in Peterborough there’s Project Abundance. In East Cambs, Wild Burwell helps people to engage with the natural environment through growing and conservation projects. The Fenland Orchard Project gets groups of volunteers together to plant heritage fruit trees and look after a green space in Wisbech. If you’d like to set up a community gardening or growing project in your neighbourhood, there may be start-up grants available from your parish, city or district council – talk to the Communities Service at Cambridgeshire County Council and they can advise.
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