The Energy Garden is a London-based organization that is tackling climate change in a multi-dimensional way that educates and brings London’s communities together through gardening.

Since its inception 10 years ago, the Energy Garden has expanded to include 34 solar-powered gardens and more than 300 regular volunteers across the nation’s capital. They started out using the green spaces next to railway station platforms to boost urban planting while offsetting emissions from the transport sector, but have since expanded their reach.

The Energy Garden sites now also host bat huts, swift nests, hedgehog houses, as well as honeybee and bumblebee shelters, which are essential in London, as its bee populations are under serious threat.

There has been so much enthusiasm for the Energy Garden initiative, especially during the lockdown, that it has expanded to include school workshops and youth training programs that aim to teach today’s youth about sustainable practices. The Energy Garden also cultivates hops to brew its own craft beer. Anyone interested in getting involved is encouraged to take part in new building and planting projects.

The project’s chief executive, Agamemnon Otero, says that the “Energy Garden is really about building resilience in communities,” and that to tackle the overwhelming issue of climate change, the focus can’t just be on the “garden or [on] energy. It’s about ‘how do we directly address the climate change issue which everyone feels powerless over.”

The Energy Garden hopes that through intertwining community connections, protection of wildlife and urban biodiversity, renewable energy, and the satisfaction of growing your own vegetables in spaces that many commuters frequent, the entire community will feel emboldened to learn how to incorporate sustainability into their own lives.

Source Image: Energy Garden