Cardiff Salad Garden is a Community Interest Company. We are a not-for-profit social enterprise and we combine growing and selling fresh cut salad leaves with working to promote positive mental health through growing.
The Salad Garden is based in the historic Bute Park walled garden in central Cardiff where we have a greenhouse and polytunnel to grow our produce.
We grow a range of salad leaves all year round for continuous harvesting. These mixed baby leaf salads are picked to order, high quality, and unique, and are available for household delivery and wholesale customers in Cardiff. We deliver in Cardiff by bicycle and we are proud to be a truly sustainable business.
At the greenhouse we offer supportive volunteering sessions, where people can develop horticultural skills; learn more about growing food, build their confidence, improve social skills, language and generally promote positive mental health and community cohesion. We have worked with asylum seekers, refugees, individuals with mental health challenges, individuals in substance misuse recovery, young people with Aspergers and many other groups from across the city. Sessions always have a time to sit down, enjoy home cooked refreshments and chat with others.
During Covid-19 we have developed several at home growing projects and worked with partner organisations to provide growing opportunities and support to isolated communities. We are lucky to have 2 large well ventilated spaces at our site and welcome all volunteers to come and enjoy the a little time in the garden in a safe, supportive community. Every one is welcome, there is no need to know about growing, we offer full training and we’re sure you’ll enjoy taking home a bag of salad after spending a sessions tending our plants.
We also run workshops, training for adults and children in schools, community projects and farms. Educating about edible plant growing, food production and harvesting. We can offer consultant services in horticulture in particular assistance to set up productive salad growing on your site.
Our Timeline 2015-2020 (updated timeline coming soon)
Cardiff Salad Garden was set up as a community interest company in 2017. In May that year we acquired our greenhouse on licence from Cardiff County Council. Founders Sophie Bolton and Fissha Teklom worked hard to turn the empty greenhouse into a wonderful salad growing space, building raised beds and planting the first salads for delivery to restaurants in summer 2017. All deliveries were done by Sophie and Fissha by bike and many volunteers came to the garden to help build the project and enjoy the benefits of growing. Over the years we have developed our offering to individuals to promote positive mental health, reduce isolation and encourage community participation through growing. In 2019 Fissha left the project and Sophie continued to run open sessions at the garden. In 2019 we gained extra growing space with our trolley beds and ran 2 sessions a week for volunteers to get involved in the project. We expanded our growing space in July 2020 with the addition of a large polytunnel which nearly doubled our growing space
Our salad is picked fresh and delivered to your door the same day by one of our lovely delivery cyclists.
