A place at the table – how the gardens support young people at Shelter Community
Did you know that half of the produce we grow here in the Kitchen Garden is donated to local charities and community organisations? We spoke to one of our partners, Shelter Community, to learn about how these donations support the work they do with young people.
“We are a small charity called Shelter Community. We run a Youth Community Home for people who otherwise would be homeless. They are aged 18 to 25 and we have nine young people in the house. We offer safe emergency accommodation for them, and it can be incredibly difficult to get leftover food from the shops into the house – hardly any fresh produce, and often things we cannot use or don’t feel are a good option. We want to offer healthy food and model eating that people can build on, habits that will help them later in life. So to be connected to the gardens and actually get the produce fresh on the table has been amazing.
And it goes beyond healthy food. It’s almost a love shared. We are all about community, and this link to the gardens makes living here in Chiswick so much more local and connected. It makes all the difference.
“For us, it’s been a real wonderful thing to receive fresh produce and to be able to teach people what’s out there and how it looks when it’s not packaged and already cut. Literally from soil to dinner table. People come from backgrounds where they haven’t been used to that, so being able to show them and cook with them is really important. We run the place a bit like a family home and we make it as homely as we can. Hence, flowers are always welcome. They make the place such a welcoming space. People love to wait for the flowers to come in, distribute them into vases, and if we have enough, everyone gets a bunch for their rooms. It just makes the whole house more friendly and welcoming.
“What we see is curiosity – ‘oh, there’s something green, what is it?’ Trying new things, finding out how to cook them, learning there’s value in fresh healthy things. Not just grabbing the first takeaway, but learning how to make things sustainable for themselves in the future.
“When donations come in, everything gets washed and cut. We make a meal plan. We cook up whatever we can, and we’ve learned plenty, even new things we didn’t know before. We tweak well‑loved recipes to put in more of the goodness from the garden. Whatever we cannot build into the plan becomes a fresh vegetable soup. It works really well. 
“There’s also the financial side. We save a lot of money thanks to you, which means we can use more money for the young people – buy a game, go out for an ice cream, help them in places where they really need it. And it goes beyond healthy food. It’s almost a love shared. We are all about community, and this link to the gardens makes living here in Chiswick so much more local and connected. It makes all the difference.
“For us, it’s been a real wonderful thing to receive fresh produce and to be able to teach people what’s out there and how it looks when it’s not packaged and already cut.
“What we see is curiosity – ‘oh, there’s something green, what is it?’ Trying new things, finding out how to cook them, learning there’s value in fresh healthy things. Not just grabbing the first takeaway, but learning how to make things sustainable for themselves in the future.
“I think spaces like Chiswick House & Gardens are hugely important. Everyone just wanders there because it’s a beautiful space. We take our young people because they need to see beauty, they need to see nature. To gain that insight of what Chiswick holds: nature, but also culture. It has been wonderful. It’s a low‑budget option to have a nice day out, any time of the year. We even visited the opening of the Artist Studios. You can just dip into this other world, and it’s beautiful. We feel so lucky to be so close.”
