You may wonder how Platt Fields Market Garden runs on a weekly basis. Below is a quick overview of what goes on in your average week, written by Jo one of MUD’s Directors.

It’s taken 8 years and many thousands of hours to finally feel on top of things at Platt Fields Market Garden (well, the growing part at least).

This is a bold statement. Possibly premature and probably tempting fate slightly.

Me and Mike laughed at ourselves this morning when we were talking through the jobs list that Mike writes on Monday mornings. Normally this time of year we are already starting to feel the overwhelming pressure to keep on top of the growing at the 1 acre market garden we run in the middle of Platt Fields Park, Manchester. The thing is, this isn't just a market garden, it’s a community market garden.

Mondays are a lovely day for us at the garden. Mike runs two two-hour green wellbeing sessions for a small, regular group of local people who have chosen to come along to help their mental health. The rest of the team often are off after the weekend and Sam is in the office doing something financy.

I run a 4-hour training programme we call the New Growers Programme. There’s around 8 women and non-binary folk who attend each week to learn about running a community food growing business. We discuss different topics, take on different tasks on the site and sometimes visit other sites and projects to inspire and inform us. We put lunch on which was cooked by our chefs for our other volunteers a few days earlier.

Soon the NHS will be returning to run their sessions in The Frog House. It’ll be the fourth year on the trot that they have run green wellbeing sessions from our space, working with people who have been referred through their GP to get help with mental health conditions.

On a Monday alone we’ll be totting up about 25 people on site helping out with growing and improving the space.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are a bit quieter - just our baker and maybe a chef from MUD Kitchen using up veg from the weekend, making preserves and pickles or bakes for the cafe.

These days we often host one or two Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR Days at the garden mid week. This is where a team from a local business comes down to volunteer and help us with some big jobs in the garden. Evolution Money visit monthly with 10 team members, helping us turn compost, prep beds, sow seeds and paint signs. The University of Manchester recently brought 40 Anthropology students to visit and help out, ask questions and give back. (we get a lot of students asking for interviews and we just don't have the time so this is a great solution!) Some weeks we can have up to 3 CSR days and over 70 extra hands.

For the CSR days we often cater for lunch and open up the cafe to serve hot and cold drinks, a tour and back story gives a bit of context to the day. Often team members come from international offices for training and conferences and a day in the garden is an opportunity to enjoy an alternative side to Manchester and a way for businesses to give back.

This sort of help is not just beneficial to our crop plan but we love welcoming new faces to the garden, introducing people to growing and community projects. Office workers love it too - getting outside, chatting with colleagues whilst weeding can be a really natural way to build more meaningful connections.

Fridays are our longest-standing volunteering session at the garden. During the first lockdown in 2020 we ran volunteer days 7 days a week and over time slowly reduced these days and merged the volunteers from 5 people a day to about 20 a day just 2 days a week, volunteers number continue to increase every week. We call our volunteer days ‘Gardening Club’ as it’s a relaxed and casual set up with no commitment needed. After you have been inducted, you can come whenever you like. Now on Fridays we can get over 30 volunteers helping out and socialising each week.

Fridays are when we get lots of stuff done for the weekend - there's often an event on at the garden so there are always jobs to do on top of the basic gardening.

We’ve recently trained up new volunteer Volunteer Coordinators to help run the sessions - handing over some responsibility has been incredibly helpful. We now have around over 10 new VC’s that help run the activities on-site, including weeding, digging, composting, planting out, harvesting for the kitchen, willow weaving, pruning, helping prep food for lunch, DIY, painting and tidying.

Fridays start slow with a pay-as-you-feel yoga class with our in house yoga teacher/events coordinator, Chelsey at 9am. There’s always an impressive turn out and it’s the best way to start a day of gardening or whatever you end up doing on a Friday.

For a couple of years we ran a weekly Community Lunch on Fridays alongside our volunteer lunch. MUD subsidises a vegan one pot suitable for all dietary needs. Last year we made the tough decision to stop but I’m really excited to bring it back for Spring. It’s a £6 bowl, grab a token from the cafe and queue at 1pm to get a delicious and seasonal bowl and something good and tasty.

The MUD Kitchen ladies not only whip together these seasonal lunches but they make the bakes and drinks for us every weekend and cater for our CSR day and external events with local businesses, providing the much needed income and stability it needs to feed the volunteers on site each week. Eventually when we make a profit through MUD Kitchen, it will go into improving Platt Fields Market Garden, keeping it safe and accessible. MUD Kitchen ensures we can open to the public at the weekends.

MUD’s investment into MUD Kitchen has created an route to market for the produce grown on site, it cuts out the middle man and means there is minimal food waste on site. It also means we get to employ more staff and keep the site safe and tidy, allowing us to generate income through events and pop ups. Without this income we wouldn't be able to open the garden apart from the volunteer sessions we run.

MUD Kitchen pops up every Saturday and Sunday in our outdoor kitchen. The team fire up the grill and cook brunch on fire from 9.30am Saturday and 10am Sunday until it’s sold out. We know selling out isn't ideal for our customers but it massively reduces food waste and helps us keep costs down, prepping for big events is something we're working on. We use organic, seasonal and locally- sourced ingredients alongside produce harvested from the garden, to make sweet and sour pickles and preserves, grilled greens and crispy potatoes. We toast focaccia and bbq organic egg and free range pork patties from Littlewoods Butchers. Each dish is smothered with a sauce full of herbs and fruits from the garden. On a sunny Sunday morning there’s nothing quite like a pile of crispy, smokey potatoes piled high and topped with a fried egg and salsa verde in my humble opinion.

Saturday is our other volunteering day and we get around 20 volunteers each week on average. It’s the same setup as Fridays. Lots can be going on - often kids and their families are running around the garden, playing in the sand pit and around The Frog House area. We occasionally host local children's birthday parties here - the kids love it and the parents seem to too. The newest addition to the kids area is the pirate ship that I’m desperate to add a scare-marmaid to, I’m 100% adding a mirror mosaic tail as a bird deterrent.

Not only are customers at the cafe, grabbing lunch or a coffee and sweet treat visiting at the weekend, but other local projects often run workshops and events too. The numbers are really starting to tot up. These projects are often community and nature focused, sharing skills and knowledge around these subjects and beyond. The more stuff like this the better I say. Collective action is the way forward.

We have all sorts of events across the year from Spring celebrations to food and drink festivals. We try to embrace the seasons and folk culture when we put on any event. Always wanting to meet new faces, learn about different cultures and nature. Our businest events we can have up to 400 people across one day. The income from these ticket sales honestly keeps the business a float.

Then you have wander-iners throughout the week on any day. These are some of my favorite interactions. The unexpected conversations with all kinds of people. Sitting in the garden on my laptop or pottering around in the cafe or polytunnel, if the gate is open, there’s always someone popping in and having a look around.

New faces and old. People who have always wanted to visit or people who had no idea we existed, children needing a wee, dogs needing a drink of water, students new to the city showing their parents around. Locals reminiscing about visiting the petting corner and the flower show or the boats on the lake even the skaters needing a broom to brush away the standing water. It’s being at the garden these days that makes me want to keep the gates open as much as possible.

Being part of this community is what has kept us going over these past 8 years. The care, and creativity in every visitor.

And so finally we feel on top of things with the garden, after years of building infrastructure funded out of our own pockets, donations, small grants and MUD’s income from the work we do outside of the garden.

That, and about 50 regular volunteers a week, 30 CSRers, 100s of cafe visitors, 20 odd wanderers, a handful of Frog House bookings and 25 programme attendees a week, to keep this place going.

(Not to mention the whole team of passionate, hard working staff.)

So how many people does it take to run a community market garden? The answer, really, is a whole community. Every person who comes through the garden, and whatever amount of work, time, energy, money, joy, or leisure, they put in to the space, makes a meaningful contribution to making it what it is. There’s always more we could do - new projects, new ideas, different ways to keep building and improving - and the more people are involved, the more we can do to improve the garden and build a space for everyone who needs it.

The thing is, it costs a lot to run Platt Fields Market Garden, and that's without paying rent(!!), that’s just to keep the gates open and the place functioning as a community space.

Getting tighter with our budgets and pricing things properly doesn't always feel right, but our priority is to keep the place going and that’s what it’s going to take, especially now with minimum wage going up, we aim to pay our permanent staff the real living wage from April 2025.

So come down and say hello, have a go at some gardening, attend an event and bring a pal in for a coffee, we’d love to see you and always appreciate the support!

Jo

MUD Director.

How many people does it take to run a community market garden?

Leek, Mushroom & Chestnut Pie