The power of local residents growing vegetables and fruit on a ‘giant’ community allotment is abundantly clear in Hartcliffe. The Hartcliffe Health and Environment Action Group (HHEAG), based in Bristol, is a community development group focusing on food, health and environmental issues. It has had a number of successes since its inception 16 years ago and is used as a model for the development of successful organic gardens and food co-ops by people from both the UK and Europe.

HHEAG has been operating for about 16 years, and is there for the long haul in terms of providing a consistent focus on healthy food and exercise in a way that particularly suits the Hartcliffe community. Dave Richards, now with The Tindall Foundation, was their Food and Health Community worker for many years and talks more about this part of Bristol in another article. HHEAG:

• Involve children and families through afterschool and school holiday activities - introducing healthy eating, cooking and gardening
• Has a fabulous, extensive garden plot with 25 volunteers and part-time staff providing food for a food co-operative shop - a business that also delivers to those who are more house-bound
• Support a walking group
• Involve the local school kids, work experience students and the local tertiary institute students in the garden
• Run cooking classes using food from the garden – with 60 cooking classes provided last year!

Sue Walker, HHEAG’s long serving community development worker, says that HHEAG has grown ‘organically’ rather than working to achieve specific, measurable outcomes, and the success of this approach is clear!

HHEAG aims to ‘walk the talk’ and to operate in an environmentally sustainable way in all areas of work. They have developed a series of steps to recycle and minimise waste. These handy hints are available on their website (look at the Environmental Impact section).