Open Food Gardens

Open Food Gardens Events

Open Food Gardens is an annual programme of local gardens open to visitors during the summer months. The programme is run by residents of St Albans District who are passionate about growing food, sharing their experiences with hundreds of visitors to the food gardens, allotments and community growing projects since 2009.

For more information about our open food garden events, please check out our events page. Open Gardens usually happen in the summer months.

Want to get growing?

Eating seasonally, eating more plants and reducing food waste can have a huge impact on your carbon footprint as well as benefits for your physical and mental health, and for nature and biodiversity too. Growing your own food anchors you to the seasons, can help to engage the family in eating more fresh produce and is sure to guarantee you don’t waste a scrap of your hard-earned harvest!

If you want to get started, we have resources to help from first-person blogs to links to local community groups. Local gardeners have also shared tips and tricks in our videos too.

Event helpers wanted

If you’re interested in growing your own food and joining the home-grown community in St Albans, Harpenden and the villages, we would love to hear from you.

You could open your own garden to the community, volunteer as an event helper or join the project team in the run up to the season.

Event volunteer tasks could be as simple as:

• setting up a banner and welcome table
• welcoming visitors and taking £2 donations on the door
• directing visitors to the host for specific queries

Get in touch via email to discuss how you can take part.

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Open Food Gardens Inspirational Videos

When 2020 stopped us running our usual programme of garden visits in 2020, we ‘went virtual’ and created a series of videos of food growing in local gardens. Check out tips and ideas here from local residents.