How Green Roots Collective started

Maya Okonkwo started Green Roots Collective in the spring of 2017 on a strip of council land that had been sitting unused for the better part of a decade. She had been growing vegetables on her balcony for three years, running out of space, and watching the patch of compacted clay behind the community centre slowly fill with litter. She knocked on the council's door, filled in the forms, and by April of that year had the keys to a padlock and a lot of questions about soil remediation. The first season was just her, her neighbour Priya, and a retired schoolteacher named Gerald who knew more about brassicas than anyone she had ever met.

The turning point came in the winter of 2018 when a local primary school asked if their Year 4 class could visit. Maya said yes, not quite knowing what she was agreeing to. Twenty-eight eight-year-olds arrived on a Tuesday morning in November, planted garlic, and left muddy and delighted. The school wrote about it in their newsletter. By February 2019, the waiting list for plots had grown from four names to thirty-one. That was when Maya realised this was not a hobby project anymore. She drew up a proper membership structure, recruited three plot-holders to form a steering committee, and applied for a small grant from the local community foundation to build the tool shed and the seed library.