They invite neighbours to grow flowers and vegetables and model the regenerative economy by creating and selling compost recycled from the food waste of local schools. We met up with Ernie Holmes and Chris Vaughan at their growing site in Winston Green.
The project started off as a gardening group. The Summerfield Residents Association joined an RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) community-building exercise called “Your Neighbourhood In Bloom.” One day, Chris visited a nearby grow site, formerly garages. He noticed the way it brought the community out together.
“I suddenly realised that it’s best to play to people’s interests. And gardening is a big interest.”
At first they used a space at the side of a community hall on Cavendish road, which was owned by the local church, and created raised beds there. Then Ann Gallagher of Incredible Surplus told them about some available greenhouses at City Hospital, and they moved. When the USE-IT scheme resourced local people to grow their ideas in 2018, the gardening group was encouraged to become a Community Benefit Society, and was renamed ‘Warm Earth’.
The journey had gone from gardening with the community to creating compost “by way of things to do”, says Ernie. Chris adds: “we thought ‘Warm Earth’, because Ernie had clicked on to this composting idea where compost generates heat.” They planned to use organic waste to create heat that would keep the raised beds active and growing for part of the winter. Warm Earth received a grant of £3000 from the Institute of Social Enterprise to develop the project with support from Birmingham City University’s STEAMhouse.
In line with the regenerative ethos, Ernie and Chris decided that Warm Earth would be self sufficient. Ernie comes from a business background and thought of two income streams: selling the compost and selling the Warm Earth technology. With regular income they’d be able to employ local people, and Warm Earth and the circular economy surrounding it would thrive.
At the greenhouses, the gardening and plant sales were doing really well, but they weren’t doing as much communal growing as they’d hoped, because the City Hospital was a bit too far away from their particular community.
The land that Warm Earth were using was planned to be used for housing, so they had to find another site. The reservoir playing field was being developed by Birmingham Settlement, so they couldn’t go there. Then Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust, who run the Centre of the Earth, pointed them to a field just around the corner from them, which only had a few alpacas occupying the space. Chris got in touch with the Birmingham Open Spaces Forum and was able to organise a grant of £10,000 with support from Get Grants, so that they could move Warm Earth and their beds to the new site.
They were continuing to work on their “Warm Earth” technology when they attended a talk at the STEAM House about chip technology. They wanted to incorporate that to trigger off when it’s time to put water onto the soil, and when it’s right to warm it up. They knew then that they needed certain technical ability to install sensors into it. “And lo and behold,” says Ernie, “we had Victor appear.” The University have a bio-science department and are always looking for new schemes that use organic material. Chris told them about the Warm Earth project and they sent over Victor, the technician, to help as a volunteer.
Warm Earth partner with many other community organisations in the neighbourhood, and most recently will be working with the REACH OUT co-ordinator to work with young offenders. They also work closely with Foundry School, the Pantry scheme, and the Newbigin Community Trust , to organise joint community events on the field. Last year they had 500 people on the field to celebrate Diwali and Bonfire Night, and this year will see another community celebration.
