The smell of fried egg sandwiches drifting across an allotment in a Leeds park on a sub-zero lunchtime in December was more than welcome to the group gathered there, breathing into gloved hands and stamping numb feet as they made jokes and reminisced.
They had spent every Tuesday afternoon of the year working on this plot, planting vegetables and building a shed for a composting toilet with reclaimed materials – though they hadn’t quite got as far as putting a door on it.
They call themselves The Lost Plot and are a club of recovering addicts finding purpose and fulfilment tending to an allotment, run by the community garden charity Hyde Park Source, originally set up to improve the local neighbourhood and now finding itself on the frontline of the UK’s cost of living crisis.
Community charities and projects such as Hyde Park Source will benefit from the 2022-23 Guardian and Observer charity appeal, via our two charity partners, Locality and Citizens Advice. So far, readers have donated more than £1,206,000 to the appeal, which runs until midnight on 15 January.
Steve has been volunteering for six and a half years, after being referred by an addiction organisation. “I was suffering from depression and alcohol abuse. I was feeling very down, very negative,” he said.
He had previously had a good job working in distribution for a soft drinks company but the shifts were long and antisocial – suddenly drinking had become a coping mechanism. Steve ended up losing his job and his house, and then both his parents died in quick succession. But it is fair to say Hyde Park Source, and the people he met through it, saved his life.
Denise, a member of The Lost Plot club, at the weekly allotment meet up in Leeds. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
He added: “If we’ve got problems, we talk about them in this group. [When in recovery] you need something to do. You need support.”
Leona Graham, another volunteer, agreed. “It’s a stepping stone for a lot of people back into society. Some of the people who come are in the thick of recovery. It’s a wonderful organisation. You wouldn’t believe the things they do.”
Hyde Park Source runs many different groups across allotments and gardens – and even a rooftop – in Leeds. The organisation works with a mix of people, from those with severe mental health issues, to children and young families living below the breadline.
The urban Hyde Park ward has the highest level of child poverty in Leeds and is one of the poorest wards in the whole of the UK. It is a concrete – or, perhaps, red brick – jungle, as very few people have what could be termed a garden among the densely packed back-to-back terraces.
Hyde Park Source began in 1998, when a group of residents living in these houses got tired of the lack of green space and decided to transform their bin yards into gardens. The idea caught on – neighbours wanted help with theirs and the community group began.
Now, more than 20 years later, the organisation has eight paid workers and 120 regular volunteers, alongside hundreds of adults and children each year who participate in groups, take part in courses or otherwise benefit from the charity.
One of those workers is Alex Langstaff, who runs many of the groups at Hyde Park Source. A couple of years previously she had been working in banking when she volunteered for the charity. When a job came up, she didn’t think twice. She said: “I saw what a big impact the gardens were having on the volunteers and what a long-term positive impact the organisation has in the community.”
Grants make up 60% of the charity’s income and the rest comes from commercial projects, such as designing and building gardens. The pandemic hit this revenue hard but it is rebounding, particularly as lockdown led many people to appreciate green space more, the charity said.
But people are also more in need than they were before – volunteers are arriving to do physical work having not eaten a meal, so the egg sandwiches are more than a bonus.
The freezing Tuesday the Guardian visited was Steve’s last day with The Lost Plot. Though still not ready to go back into paid work just yet, he is now volunteering for a number of different projects in Leeds. But he is thankful he found Hyde Park Source when he did.
“Life’s not a bed of roses. You come across hurdles that get you down. Without this, I’d have probably … whatever. I don’t think I’d have found my way without this,” he added.